Journalistic Eggggregious Error of the Week:

The august “Economist” just showed how companies with executives attending Davos underperformed the market.

Well… looks convincing but they fell for an elementary mistake: companies attending Davos are large and geographically/sectorially idiosyncratic; they did not consider whether large companies underperformed over the period

This is called a confounder in statistics… an elementary mistake. People who drink tend to have lung cancer, but there is no strong relation between alcohol and lung carcinoma… It is because people who drink tend to smoke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

You can only make a comparative statement (nonbullshit, that is) by controlling for size, industry, and location. The companies involved are 103 companies with $12 trillion cap.

via (1) Timeline Photos – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.