Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Andy Smith is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), licensed realtor and educator with over ...

Correctly distinguishing between correlation and causation is critical because it influences how treatments for illnesses are devised and tested. Also, in the context of the law, it ensures that as ...

In Friday’s Financial Times, economist and author Tim Harford offers a much-needed, unusually considered response to big data hype, using the reported failure of Google Flu Trends to predict a recent ...

There’s an old saying that goes, “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” But sometimes even the figures can spin a confusing story. That’s why I’ve always appreciated the power of understanding ...

A comment posted by a reader on a recent post reprimanded me for suggesting that marijuana caused relationships to go bad. In this instance the reader was mistaken, as I had specifically used the word ...

The most powerful weapon that debaters wield against the unwary is causation: marijuana use leads to heroin addiction, pornography to rape, video games to mass murder, high consumption of margarine to ...

In a medical malpractice case, expert testimony is required to establish the standard of care, a departure from that standard, and that the departure was a proximate cause of the damages claimed.