A simple way to estimate confidence intervals that most people don’t know about that can also be used to estimate sample sizes or as an alternative to power calculations

April 25, 2017

Whenever you are looking at an average of something, it's useful to ask yourself, "plus or minus what?" Averages nearly always have uncertainty associated with them because they are calculated based on a sample of a larger population. For instance, if you want to know how happy people in the U.S. are, on average, you could try to figure it out by asking them, "On a scale from 0 to 100, how happy are you?" But of course, you can't pose that question to everyone in the U.S., so instead, ...

Extreme Interventions that are Sometimes Life-Changing

March 31, 2017

Although self-help techniques, when tried in isolation, usually fail, I occasionally hear about an extreme intervention that had a permanent and exceptionally positive effect on the person who tried it. One notable feature of extreme improvements, as opposed to medium-sized ones, is that they probably won't just happen to you by chance. Medium-sized improvements can occur randomly, so it's harder to confirm whether positive results are related to some purposeful change you've made. More extr...

Why do people not behave in their own self-interest?

March 19, 2017

Naively, one might assume that people do what it benefits them to do. In fact, that's an assumption commonly made in economics. Yet it's clear that our behavior is not always in our own self-interest. People frequently buy fake supplements, try drugs they know are highly addictive, eat things they know they'll later regret, drive away the people they love most, procrastinate on really important things, and so on. So why do we behave in these strange ways? Well, here's my list of reasons we ...

Better Formats For Group Interaction – Beyond Lectures, Group Discussions, Panels and Mixers

March 5, 2017

Nearly all large events use a combination of only these four simple formats for human interaction: lectures, group discussions, panels, and mixers. Yet there are more than 45 structured ways that groups of people who don't know each other can come together to interact, bond, learn, and help each other (see my full list at the bottom of this article, or click here for a spreadsheet version). Unfortunately, each of the four standard group interaction templates has significant flaws: Lecture ...

The Stories Democrats and Republicans Don’t Agree On

January 20, 2017

In efforts to encourage understanding and openness on Inauguration Day, we wrote a pair of simple, short essays. One is designed to capture the views of the majority of Clinton supporters, the other, the views of the majority of Trump supporters. We had 80 supporters from each group read the corresponding essay and rate whether they agreed or disagreed with each sentence, and whether they agreed with the essay overall. After adjustments based on the feedback we received, we published the two...

What Health Advice Is There a Consensus On?

January 16, 2017

What recommendations related to diet, nutrition and health seem to be universally agreed on by experts of nearly all stripes and schools of thought? Given the incredibly high levels of disagreement in these areas, and the poor quality of studies, it often seems like we know almost nothing. Below is my attempt (via a combination of brainstorming and crowdsourcing) to list what there does seem to be a high rate of consensus on. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes. Tentative L...