May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It

Our lives are minefields of misinformation. It ripples through our social media feeds, our daily headlines, and the pronouncements of politicians, business leaders, and best-selling authors. Stories, statistics, and studies are everywhere, allowing people to find evidence to support whatever position they want. Many of these sources are flawed, yet by playing on our emotions and preying on our biases, they can gain widespread acceptance, warp our views, and distort our decisions.

In this talk, author and economist Professor Alex Edmans explains how to separate fact from fiction. Going beyond simply checking the facts and explaining individual statistics, it explores the relationships between statistics – the science of cause and effect – ultimately training us to think smarter, sharper, and more critically, to make better sense of the world and make better decisions.

In this session, you’ll learn how to

• Banish Your Biases – the mindtraps that cause us to fall for fluff

• Detect Deception – notice a correlation masquerading as causation, or an anecdote presented as data

• Think Critically – simple questions to ask, to know how much you can really trust an information source