Lesson 6: Data Is Not Evidence | Alex Edmans

Did you know that the number of people killed by venomous spiders in the US is correlated with the number of letters in the winning word of that year’s National Spelling Bee? Neither did we.

In today's data-driven world, we often equate large datasets with undeniable truth, but as Professor Alex Edmans uncovers, data alone isn’t evidence. While the spider example is clearly coincidental (each letter of the winning word isn't causing someone's death!), identifying causation is often much harder.

In this video lesson, Edmans helps clarify what truly counts as evidence.

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About Alex Edmans:

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS.

Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance. He is a Director of the American Finance Association; Vice President of the Western Finance Association; Fellow, Director, and Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Management Association; Fellow of the British Academy; and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. From 2017-2022 he was Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe.

Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.8 million views. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.