Mean Methods

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The mean is lying to you

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statisticsdata science

The Ecological Fallacy: What's True for Groups Is Not True for People

The ecological fallacy silently corrupts data analysis. Here's why group-level statistics can't tell you what you think they can about individuals.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
probabilitycognitive bias

The Gambler's Fallacy: Why Your Brain Thinks Coins Have Memory

The Gambler's Fallacy feels like logic but it's a statistical trap, and it's costing you more than casino chips.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
probabilitydecision theory

Expected Value Is a Lie Your Brain Can't Process

Expected value is the most useful concept in probability, and one of the most systematically misapplied. Here's why your intuition keeps betraying you.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 5 min read
probabilitystatistics

The Prosecutor's Fallacy: How Probability Gets Weaponized in Courtrooms (and Boardrooms)

The prosecutor's fallacy flips conditional probability, and it doesn't just convict innocent people. It quietly corrupts decisions everywhere.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsdata visualization

Anscombe's Quartet: Four Datasets That Make Statistics Look Stupid

Anscombe's Quartet proves that identical summary statistics can hide wildly different data, and why you should always visualize before you calculate.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 5 min read
probabilitystatistics

The Law of Large Numbers Is Not What You Think It Is

Most people misunderstand the Law of Large Numbers, and that misunderstanding is quietly wrecking their decisions about data, gambling, and risk.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
probabilitycognitive bias

Base Rate Neglect: Why Your Gut Probability Is Almost Always Wrong

Base rate neglect is the statistical error hiding behind your best decisions. Here's why ignoring prior probabilities quietly destroys your analysis.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
machine learningstatistics

Overfitting: The Model That Knows Everything and Predicts Nothing

Overfitting is the silent killer of predictive models. Your model aced the training data and failed in the real world, here's why.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsregression to the mean

Regression to the Mean: The Statistical Force You Keep Mistaking for Progress

Regression to the mean quietly corrupts medical studies, coaching decisions, and business strategy, and most people never see it coming.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsab-testing

Multiple Comparisons Problem: Why Your A/B Tests Are Lying to You

How running multiple statistical tests inflates your false discovery rate and tricks you into seeing patterns that don't exist.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsdata-analysis

Simpson's Paradox: When Your Data Tells Two Opposite Stories

How Simpson's Paradox can make your data analysis completely backwards and why aggregated statistics are hiding the truth.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
central-limit-theoremstatistical-assumptions

Why Central Limit Theorem Is Your Biggest Statistical Blind Spot

The Central Limit Theorem creates dangerous assumptions about data that lead to catastrophic analytical failures in real-world applications.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsdata-analysis

Standard Deviation: The Statistical Sleight of Hand Nobody Questions

Standard deviation obscures reality more than it reveals, here's why this beloved metric is misleading data scientists everywhere.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsconfidence-intervals

Why Your Confidence Intervals Don't Actually Give You Confidence

Confidence intervals are widely misunderstood, here's why that 95% doesn't mean what you think it means.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
causationcorrelation

Correlation vs Causation: Why Smart People Keep Getting It Wrong

Smart analysts confuse correlation with causation daily, making expensive mistakes that proper causal thinking could prevent.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
statisticsdistributions

The Mean Is Lying to You (And You Keep Falling For It)

The arithmetic mean is the most misused statistic in existence. Here's why your average is almost certainly misleading.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 3 min read
p-valuesresearch methodology

P-Hacking: The Pandemic Nobody Talks About

If you torture the data long enough, it'll confess to anything. Here's how the scientific method is being quietly undermined by incentive structures.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 3 min read
bayesianfrequentist

The Bayesian vs Frequentist War Is a Distraction

The decades-long framework debate matters far less than whether you actually understand what your numbers are telling you.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read
cognitive biasstrategy

Survivorship Bias Is Eating Your Strategy Alive

You're building strategy on the winners you can see while ignoring the graveyard of failures you can't. Here's how that's destroying your decisions.

C. Pearson C. Pearson
· · 4 min read