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What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives
Fact:In Israel, pilot trainees who were praised for doing well subsequently performed worse, while trainees who were shouted at for doing poorly performed better.Highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent.Students who get the highest scores in third grade generally get lower scores in fourth grade.Truth:It’s wrong to conclude that shouting is a more effective tool.It’s wrong to conclude that women choose men whose intelligence does not intimidate them.It’s wrong to conclude that schools are failing their students.There’s one reason for each of these truths: a concept called regression to the mean. It explains how we can be misled by luck in our day-to-day lives. An insufficient appreciation of luck and chance can wreak all kinds of mischief in sports, education, medicine, business, politics, and more. Perfectly natural random variation can lead us to attach meaning to the meaningless and in What the Luck?, statistician Gary Smith explains how an understanding of luck can change the way we see just about every aspect of our lives . . . and can help us learn to rely less on random chance, and more on truth.
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What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives
Fact:In Israel, pilot trainees who were praised for doing well subsequently performed worse, while trainees who were shouted at for doing poorly performed better.Highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent.Students who get the highest scores in third grade generally get lower scores in fourth grade.Truth:It’s wrong to conclude that shouting is a more effective tool.It’s wrong to conclude that women choose men whose intelligence does not intimidate them.It’s wrong to conclude that schools are failing their students.There’s one reason for each of these truths: a concept called regression to the mean. It explains how we can be misled by luck in our day-to-day lives. An insufficient appreciation of luck and chance can wreak all kinds of mischief in sports, education, medicine, business, politics, and more. Perfectly natural random variation can lead us to attach meaning to the meaningless and in What the Luck?, statistician Gary Smith explains how an understanding of luck can change the way we see just about every aspect of our lives . . . and can help us learn to rely less on random chance, and more on truth.
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What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives

What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives

by Gary Smith
What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives
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What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives

What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in our Everyday Lives

by Gary Smith

Overview

Fact:In Israel, pilot trainees who were praised for doing well subsequently performed worse, while trainees who were shouted at for doing poorly performed better.Highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent.Students who get the highest scores in third grade generally get lower scores in fourth grade.Truth:It’s wrong to conclude that shouting is a more effective tool.It’s wrong to conclude that women choose men whose intelligence does not intimidate them.It’s wrong to conclude that schools are failing their students.There’s one reason for each of these truths: a concept called regression to the mean. It explains how we can be misled by luck in our day-to-day lives. An insufficient appreciation of luck and chance can wreak all kinds of mischief in sports, education, medicine, business, politics, and more. Perfectly natural random variation can lead us to attach meaning to the meaningless and in What the Luck?, statistician Gary Smith explains how an understanding of luck can change the way we see just about every aspect of our lives . . . and can help us learn to rely less on random chance, and more on truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781468315530
Publisher: Abrams Press
Publication date: 10/17/2017
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gary Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He has written (or co-authored) ten books and seventy-five academic papers on finance, sports, and statistical pitfalls. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Motley Fool, Newsweek and BusinessWeek. He was a guest speaker on CNBC, and a keynote speaker at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and the Mortgage Finance Industry Summit in New York City. He received his B.A. in Mathematics with Honors from Harvey Mudd College and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.

Table of Contents

I Overreaction

1 The Law of Small Numbers 3

II Inherited Traits

2 The Father of Regression 13

3 Choose Your Parents Carefully 23

III Education

4 Testing 1, 2, 3 35

5 The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves 45

6 Money For Nothing 55

7 Learning and Unlearning 63

IV Games of Chance

8 Hopes and Excuses 79

V Sports

9 Champions Choke 97

10 Jinxes, Slumps, and Superstitions 113

11 Being Smart About It 123

VI Health

12 Take Two Aspirin 135

13 The Tin Standard 153

VII Business

14 The Triumph of Mediocrity 173

15 From Bad to Better and Great to Good 187

16 Draft Picks, CEOs, and Soul Mates 199

VIII Forecasting

17 A Better Crystal Ball 227

IX Investing

18 $100 Bills on the Sidewalk 239

X Conclusion

19 Living with Regression 261

Bibliography 269

Index 285

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