Quotes from Charles Wheelan

Good policy uses incentives to channel behavior toward some desired outcome. Bad policy either ignores incentives, or fails to anticipate how rational individuals might change their behavior to avoid being penalized.

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

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

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.

Fire, knives, automobiles, hair removal cream. Each of these things serves an important purpose. Each one makes our lives better. And each one can cause some serious problems when abused. Now you can add statistics to that list.

the most dangerous kind of job stress stems from having "low control" over one's responsibilities.

Data are to statistics what a good offensive is to a star quarterback.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

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.

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

Remember, human capital embodies not only classroom training but also perseverance, honesty, creativity—virtues that lend themselves to finding work.) Some

Their eagerness to learn was replaced by a bizarre and erroneous notion that education is somehow a competition, not a process whereby a person becomes more capable and complete. There is even a term for the elite high school students most consumed by this phenomenon: "crispies"—because they have burned out. On

One powerful feature of a market economy is that it directs resources to their most productive use. Why doesn't Brad Pitt sell automobile insurance? Because it would be an enormous waste of his unique talents.

The democratic process will always favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups. It's not just how many people care one way or the other; it's how much they care. Two percent who care deeply about something

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

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

economy is the art of making the most of life." Economics is the study of how we do that.

If average students are increasingly getting the highest possible grade, how can employers and graduate schools identify the truly exceptional