In an “American Economic Review” paper, Peter Kennedy complained that statisticians often use formulas to get answers – but lack the understanding for their practical application. In today’s world, we see the output of this confusion in many forms when headlines scream “Growth accelerates even as unemployment rises”.
Or alternatively, “Transactions reach historical high in real estate even as prices fall”. For us to make sense of this incongruence, we need to look behind the data to construct an alternative model that has better explanatory power.
