First-Principles Statistics for Cognitive Bias
Last Updated on February 17, 2026 by Editorial Team
Author(s): Shenggang Li
Originally published on Towards AI.
A practical, model-based way to stop getting fooled by “simple health rules” online
Why do “one simple habit” posts feel so convincing?
This article explores the pitfalls of oversimplified health advice, emphasizing that real-life outcomes are often influenced by multiple factors rather than a single action. It outlines several biases to be wary of, such as the dangers of small sample sizes, selection bias, confounding variables, and interaction effects, all of which can distort our understanding of cause and effect. The piece argues for a deeper engagement with data, advocating for a first-principles approach in statistical thinking to discern genuine insights from misleading claims.
Read the full blog for free on Medium.
Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor.
Published via Towards AI
Towards AI Academy
We Build Enterprise-Grade AI. We'll Teach You to Master It Too.
15 engineers. 100,000+ students. Towards AI Academy teaches what actually survives production.
Start free — no commitment:
→ 6-Day Agentic AI Engineering Email Guide — one practical lesson per day
→ Agents Architecture Cheatsheet — 3 years of architecture decisions in 6 pages
Our courses:
→ AI Engineering Certification — 90+ lessons from project selection to deployed product. The most comprehensive practical LLM course out there.
→ Agent Engineering Course — Hands on with production agent architectures, memory, routing, and eval frameworks — built from real enterprise engagements.
→ AI for Work — Understand, evaluate, and apply AI for complex work tasks.
Note: Article content contains the views of the contributing authors and not Towards AI.
Related posts
Recent Posts
