Much of the time, people derive causation from correlation. Put another way, when two odd circumstances seem to align with one another, people assume that one causes the other. Such logic simply makes ...

Data purists would rap my knuckles for asking this question and reply, "Never". On the other hand, "data sophists" who're accustomed to lying with Big Data in even more crude ways would wonder, “Duh, ...

"I read it as a joke!" one student chortled. "It definitely wasn't completely serious, was it?" another asked as she shook her head in disbelief. The intimate group of nine students—which includes a ...

With the explosion of interest in Big Data everyone in every department is looking for actionable intelligence. That’s great but there’s a downside: Trying to explain to, say, your VP of sales that ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about the broad intersection of data and society. As machine learning has expanded beyond its roots in the worlds of ...

Most studies include multiple response variables, and the dependencies among them are often of great interest. For example, we may wish to know whether the levels of mRNA and the matching protein vary ...

Paul Kaplan: Quoting Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain famously quipped, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." In the field of investments, in which we rely heavily on ...

There’s an old saying that goes, “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” But sometimes even the figures can spin a confusing story. That’s why I’ve always appreciated the power of understanding ...

CORRELATION, CAUSATION, AND BLOGGING....Kieran Healy is annoyed: You only have to hang around the world of social science research- or policy-related blogging for a few hours before you come across ...