#453: What Causes What?




Planet Money show

Summary: What causes what? The human brain is programmed to answer this question constantly. This how we survive. What made that noise? Bear made that noise. What caused my hand to hurt? Fire caused my hand to hurt. We are so eager to figure what causes what — that we often get it wrong. I wore my lucky hat to the game. My team won. Therefore, my lucky hat caused my team to win. On today's show we dive deep into the world of correlation and causation with Charles Wheelan, author of the new book, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data.