Share this page!

Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Twitter logo
1 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Challenge in social science posts: indicating when claims are causal in papers. Many papers find relationships without trying to show causality- a useful start for more research! But readers may think a causal argument is being made & complain. Good intro: alexedmans.com/blog/corporate…
Academics tend to be very careful about this language. If something is “linked” or “associated” with something else, that is not making a claim that one causes another. Neither is “predicted by” in many cases. This thread 👇 on Hill’s Criteria can help you think through claims.
And don’t get me started on “correlation isn’t causation.” Correlation could be:
✅Nothing
✅Causation or reverse causation
✅Confounding factors or omitted variables
✅Both factors lead to group selection (more men are 👩‍🚒, more 👩‍🚒 get hurt in 🔥, but 🔥doesn’t burn men more) Image
This is a another great resource (and a neat puzzle on causality) for understanding how casual reasoning can be tricky.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Ethan Mollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @emollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture
4 May
For May 4th, a lesson on how to sell new technology from Star Wars (& Edison). The key to the look of Star Wars ships are greebles: glued-on bits from off-the-shelf model kits of WWII tanks, planes etc. They make a connection with current tech, making Star Wars feel familiar. 1/ Image
To sell electricity, Edison used the same technique as the Star War's greebles by using skeumorphs (a design throwback to an earlier use) connecting his new scary tech to a familiar one: gas. Gas lights gave off light equal to a 12 watt 💡so Edison limited his 💡 to 13 watts. 2/ ImageImage
As another example, lampshades weren't needed for an electric light, since they were originally used to keep gas lamps from sputtering. But Edison added them anyhow. While not required, they are comforting and, again, made a greeble-like connection to the older technology. 3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
19 Apr
I think many lean startup founders do far too many customer interviews- 100 or more in many cases! Diminishing returns kick in pretty fast & there are other startup experiments, too. So how do you know how many to do? Look for “theme saturation” when <5% of information is new 1/2 Image
Ways of calculating this are in the article, but there is evidence that 92% of key themes are identified within 12 interviews. Even cross-cultural studies often require only 20-40 interviews. Interviews can help but you need to progress to other tests! 2/2 journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
In general, founders should separate the vital parts of the lean startup method (experiments & hypotheses!) from the dogmatic parts (too many interviews, business model canvas). That doesn’t mean the dogmatic parts can’t be useful, but they are limiting. hbr.org/2019/10/what-t…
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
1 Apr
A brief thread on color differentiation!

We have a huge number of words for color in English, as Ingrid Sundberg's Color Thesaurus shows. 1/n ingridsundberg.com/2014/02/04/the…
But different cultures group colors differently. This chart based on research by Gibson and Conway shows the difficulty of communicating a color. The colors to the left are easiest to communicate since they are most distinct (white and red in English). 2/n theconversation.com/languages-dont…
But the emotional associations with colors are remarkably similar across cultures. 3/n
Read 7 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
25 Mar
What is most powerful economic knowledge for individuals to understand to improve their lives? This paper surveyed every economist in Sweden and found the overwhelming choice was... opportunity cost. The paper: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

So here is a thread on opportunity cost....
Opportunity cost is what you give up when you make a choice. Not just what you didn't buy with the 💰 you spent, but also what you could have done with that 💰 if you saved it for the future. Since you must have chosen the best option, opportunity cost is your next best choice. 2
Except that it often isn't! A lot of research has shown that people neglect opportunity cost when making choices. This leads to consumers falling prey to bad marketing, policy makers making short-sighted decisions, etc. @danariely summarizes this in his interview with Reuters. 3
Read 5 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
24 Mar
Thing to never do again: open offices. In addition to being terrible places to work, (they actually lower communication!) they are 🦠parties . Sick days are 62% higher than individual offices. Even group offices are better, six person rooms have 30% less sick days than open plans
Maybe you don't care about getting sick, because you just want to talk to people. But open offices also kill socialization! Face-to-face communication among office workers actually drops by 70%(!!) in open plan offices, since people hide away from others. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.109…
Also, lets talk noise. Open office noise is a really subtle thing. In surveys, people think that they can concentrate in open office environments, but study after study shows that they are much worse at concentrating than they think. And noise cancelling headphones don't help...
Read 5 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
21 Mar
Ever wonder why Monopoly feels unfair? It was supposed to teach why capitalism as bad! The original game started similarly, but any two players could vote to switch to progressive rules that nationalized the utilities & railroad and switched the "Jail” space to“Free College" 1/ ImageImage
The game was invented by feminist & polymath Elizabeth Magie, who patented it in 1903. But variants spread quickly, and it was even used in Wharton economics classes to "to show the antisocial nature of monopoly,” before being co-opted by the Parker Bros. simulations.wharton.upenn.edu/2016/03/10/mon… ImageImage
Also the original names of the properties: “Lord Blueblood’s Estate,” “The Soakum Lighting Co.,” and “Hogg’s Game Preserve” are much better then the Atlantic City streets we ended up with. Image
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @emollick has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @emollick!

Read all threads by @emollick

:(