Accounts Quote by Atul Gawande
“In psychology, there's something called the broken-leg problem. A statistical formula may be highly successful in predicting whether or not a person will go to a movie in the next week. But someone who knows that this person is laid up with a broken leg will beat the formula. No formula can take into account the infinite range of such exceptional events.”
About This Quote
Source Book: Being Mortal, Atul Gawande, 2014
Statistical models miss unique, unpredictable events that can overturn predictions.
In simple terms: Models ignore rare, personal circumstances.
Key Takeaway
Consider context beyond data.
Themes
statistics
prediction
uncertainty
Mood
cautious
analytical
Type
philosophical
practical
When to use this quote
- market research
- health forecasts
- risk assessment
- personalized medicine
Key Concepts
probability
outlier events
Questions to Reflect On
- How can you incorporate rare events into planning?
- When should you trust intuition over data?
A Different Perspective
Models cannot capture every possible exception.
