The latte factor gets the arithmetic right and the mechanism wrong
His sum checks out to the dollar. But 85% of people are passive savers who ignore price incentives, and financial education explains 0.1% of the variance in behaviour.
"Miss the 10 Best Days" Is Half of a Calculation
The statistic every advisor quotes is real. So is the mirror image nobody quotes — and when a researcher ran both at once, the result was not the one the slogan implies.
Two Researchers Disagreed About Money and Happiness. So They Ran the Study Together.
The famous $75,000 plateau and the study that contradicted it were both partly right. Finding that out required something research almost never does: the two authors sat down and re-analysed the data jointly.
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The 50% Divorce Rate Was True for About One Year. You Can Name It.
In 1981 the United States recorded 2,422,000 marriages and 1,213,000 divorces. Divide one by the other and you get 50.1%. It was also the peak year. The statistic has not been updated since.
The Open Office Was Built on a Measurement. Then Nobody Measured It Again for...
When researchers finally put sensors on employees before and after a redesign, face-to-face interaction fell by about 70%. The study did not measure productivity — and after six decades of fit-outs, almost nothing has.
Nobody Is Left-Brained. The Man Who Won the Nobel for Split Brains Said So...
A study of 1,011 brains looked for people whose left or right hemisphere ran stronger overall. It found lateralised functions everywhere and lateralised people nowhere.