Charles Wheelan Quotes & Sayings

According to the American Lung Association, the average smoker dies seven years earlier than the average nonsmoker, which means that smokers pay into Social Security and private pension funds for all of their working lives but then don't stick around very long to collect the benefits. — Charles Wheelan

It's easy to lie with statistics, but it's hard to tell the truth without them. — Charles Wheelan

Obituaries are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives. I defy you to find a single obituary that begins, "Jane Doe won the Nobel Prize in large part because she was admitted to a prestigious, highly selective preschool. After that, everything just kind of fell into place." Instead, you will read about dead ends, lucky coincidences, quirky habits, excessive self-confidence (often interspersed with bursts of excessive self-doubt), and a lot of passion for something. — Charles Wheelan

what economic benefit smokers provide for nonsmokers (they die earlier, leaving more Social Security and pension benefits for the rest of us), — Charles Wheelan

Less obviously, concern for the environment is a luxury good. Wealthy Americans are willing to spend more money to protect the environment as a fraction of their incomes than are less wealthy Americans. The same relationship holds true across countries; wealthy nations devote a greater share of their resources to protecting the environment than do poor countries. — Charles Wheelan

The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income."4 — Charles Wheelan

Recognize that your own motivation, ambition, and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma."8 — Charles Wheelan

The world is producing more and more data, ever faster and faster. Yet, as the New York Times has noted, "Data is merely the raw material of knowledge."3* Statistics is the most powerful tool we have for using information to some meaningful end, — Charles Wheelan

Being great involves luck, and unique circumstances, and a lot of other forces beyond your control. You can't just make it happen by working more or trying harder.
There is an irony here, of course. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn't, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid. — Charles Wheelan

In a basic agricultural society, it's easy enough to swap five chickens for a new dress or to pay a schoolteacher with a goat and three sacks of rice. Barter works less well in a more advanced economy. The logistical challenges of using chickens to buy books on Amazon would be formidable. — Charles Wheelan

One of the most bizarre and intriguing findings is that people with brain damage may be particularly good investors. Why? Because damage to certain parts of the brain can impair the emotional responses that cause the rest of us to do foolish things. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and the University of Iowa conducted an experiment that compared the investment decisions made by fifteen patients with damage to the areas of the brain that control emotions (but with intact logic and cognitive functions) to the investment decisions made by a control group. The brain-damaged investors finished the game with 13 percent more money than the control group, largely, the authors believe, because they do not experience fear and anxiety. The impaired investors took more risks when there were high potential payoffs and got less emotional when they made losses.7 This — Charles Wheelan

The good news is that these descriptive statistics give us a manageable and meaningful summary of the underlying phenomenon. That's what this chapter is about. The bad news is that any simplification invites abuse. Descriptive statistics can be like online dating profiles: technically accurate and yet pretty darn misleading. — Charles Wheelan

So it is with statistics; no amount of fancy analysis can make up for fundamentally flawed data. Hence the expression garbage in, garbage out. — Charles Wheelan

Statistical inference is really just the marriage of two concepts that we've already discussed: data and probability (with a little help from the central limit theorem). — Charles Wheelan

Making money takes time, so when we shop, we're really spending time. The real cost of living isn't measured in dollars and cents but in the hours and minutes we must work to live.1 — Charles Wheelan

A study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that every $1 increase in the price of gasoline is associated with an additional 1,500 motorcycle deaths annually.10 — Charles Wheelan

During the twentieth century, communist governments killed some 100 million of their own people in peacetime, either by repression or by famine. — Charles Wheelan

(As a rule of thumb, the sample size must be at least 30 for the central limit theorem to hold true.) This — Charles Wheelan

Why did the entrepreneur cross the road? Because he could make more money on the other side. — Charles Wheelan

Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house. — Charles Wheelan

If you consider people, not countries, global inequality is falling rapidly. — Charles Wheelan

Housing prices had never before fallen as far and as fast as they did beginning in 2007. But that's what happened. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan explained to a congressional committee after the fact, "The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of [2007] because the data input into the risk management models generally covered only the past two decades, a period of euphoria. Had instead the models been fitted more appropriately to historic periods of stress, capital requirements would have been much higher and the financial world would be in far better shape, in my judgment."3 — Charles Wheelan

Change is inevitable; but progress depends on what we do with that change. — Charles Wheelan

The democratic process will always favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups. — Charles Wheelan

Therein lies the insight: Even though you will continue moving forever - with each move taking you half the remaining distance to the wall - the total distance you travel can never be more than 2 feet, which is your starting distance from the wall. For mathematical purposes, the total distance you travel can be approximated as 2 feet, which turns out to be very handy for computation purposes. A mathematician would say that the sum of this infinite series 1 ft + ½ ft + ¼ ft + ⅛ ft ... converges to 2 feet, which is what our instructor was trying to teach us that day. — Charles Wheelan

The real cost of something is what you must give up in order to get it, which is almost always more than just cash. — Charles Wheelan

Descriptive statistics exist to simplify, which always implies some loss of nuance or detail. — Charles Wheelan

Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives. — Charles Wheelan

Most economists would concede that, in theory, government has the tools to smooth the business cycle. The problem is that fiscal policy is not made in theory; it's made in Congress. — Charles Wheelan

The greatest risks are never the ones you can see and measure, but the ones you can't see and therefore can never measure. The ones that seem so far outside the boundary of normal probability that you can't imagine they could happen in your lifetime - even though, of course, they do happen, more often than you care to realize. — Charles Wheelan

Meanwhile, time is one of our most scarce resources. At the moment, you are reading instead of working, playing with the dog, applying to law school, shopping for groceries, or having sex. Life is about trade-offs, and so is economics. — Charles Wheelan

I once interviewed Robert Solow, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics and a noted baseball enthusiast. I asked if it bothered him that he received less money for winning the Nobel Prize than Roger Clemens, who was pitching for the Red Sox at the time, earned in a single season. "No," Solow said. "There are a lot of good economists, but there is only one Roger Clemens." That is how economists think. — Charles Wheelan

Maybe it's a stretch to blame a broader social pathology on hyper-competitive soccer parents. Still, there is not a huge downside to asking every once in a while, Why am I doing this? We will know for certain that my analysis is wrong when we see the following obituary: Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place. — Charles Wheelan

Economics is like gravity: Ignore it and you will be in for some rude surprises. — Charles Wheelan

Economic development is not a zero-sum game; the world does not need poor countries in order to have rich countries, nor must some people be poor in order for others to be rich. Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house. They are poor despite the fact that Bill Gates lives in a big house. For a complex array of reasons, America's poor have not shared in the productivity gains spawned by Microsoft Windows. Bill Gates did not take their pie away; he did not stand in the way of their success or benefit from their misfortunes. — Charles Wheelan

The most dangerous kind of job stress stems from having "low control" over one's responsibilities. — Charles Wheelan

Is the journey still worthwhile if the mountain turns out to be enshrouded in fog at the top? — Charles Wheelan

Technology displaces workers in the short run but does not lead to mass unemployment in the long run. — Charles Wheelan

Statistics is like a high-caliber weapon: helpful when used correctly and potentially disastrous in the wrong hands. — Charles Wheelan

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives. — Charles Wheelan

Our ability to analyze data has grown far more sophisticated than our thinking about what we ought to do with the results. You — Charles Wheelan

Two percent who care deeply about something are a more potent political force than the 98 percent who feel the opposite but aren't motivated enough to do anything about it. — Charles Wheelan

The [Value at Risk model] was like a faulty speedometer, which is arguably worse than no speedometer at all. If you place too much faith in the broken speedometer, you will be oblivious to other signs that your speed is unsafe. In contrast, if there is no speedometer at all, you have no choice but to look around for clues as to how fast you are really going. — Charles Wheelan

Probability doesn't make mistakes; people using probability make mistakes. — Charles Wheelan

Consider a nonstatistics example: Did the U.S. invasion of Iraq make America safer? There is only one intellectually honest answer: We will never know. The reason we will never know is that we do not know - and cannot know - what would have happened if the United States had not invaded Iraq. True, the United States did not find weapons of mass destruction. But it is possible that on the day after the United States did not invade Iraq Saddam Hussein could have climbed into the shower and said to himself, "I could really use a hydrogen bomb. I wonder if the North Koreans will sell me one?" After that, who knows? — Charles Wheelan

So, to return to the title chapter, what is the point of learning statistics? To summarize huge quantities of data. To make better decisions. To answer important social questions. To recognize patterns that can refine how we do everything from selling diapers to catching criminals. To catch cheaters and prosecute criminals. To evaluate the effectiveness of policies, programs, drugs, medical procedures, and other innovations. And to spot the scoundrels who use these very same powerful tools for nefarious ends. — Charles Wheelan

At a time when we can split the atom, land on the moon, and decode the human genome, why do 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day? — Charles Wheelan

How much does it cost to treat leprosy? One $3 dose of antibiotic will cure a mild case; a $20 regimen of three antibiotics will cure a more severe case. The World Health Organization even provides the drugs free,
but India's health care infrastructure is not good enough to identify the afflicted and get them the
medicine they need.

So, more than 100,000 people in India are horribly disfigured by a disease that costs $3 to cure.
That is what it means to have a per capita GDP of $2,900. — Charles Wheelan

Here is one of the most important things to remember when doing research that involves regression analysis: Try not to kill anyone. You can even put a little Post-it note on your computer monitor: "Do not kill people with your research." Because some very smart people have inadvertently violated that rule. — Charles Wheelan

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it maximized his utility. — Charles Wheelan

The authors propose "a New Deal for globalization - one thatlinks engagement with the world economy to a substantial redistribution of income." Remember, this isn't hippy talk. These are the capitalists who see angry workers with pitchforks loitering outside the gates of a very profitable factory, and they are making a very pragmatic calculation: Throw these people some food (and maybe some movie tickets and beer) before we all end up worse off — Charles Wheelan

We've built a society that values civil liberties even at the expense of social order. — Charles Wheelan