It’s tempting to see patterns in the random kaleidoscope of everyday experiences, but it's also dangerous.

Along with his business partner Warren Buffet, vice-chair of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger has made billions of dollars but, by his own admission, he would have made billions more if only he’d made better decisions. He joins Professor Steven Pinker to discuss defying the odds and the dangers of over-interpreting coincidences. They hear why Tim Harford, economist, presenter of ‘More or Less’ and author of ‘How to Make the World Add Up: 10 Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers’ thinks a stock-picking cow can help us make sense of a complicated world.

Producer: Imogen Walford

Think with Pinker is produced in partnership with The Open University.

Sabermetrics, the search for objective knowledge about baseball by analysing statistical records, has transformed the sport. But can statistics and formulas really do a better job of picking the best players than a baseball coach with decades of experience?

Professor Steven Pinker is joined by Sig Mejdal, sabermetrician, former NASA engineer and assistant manager of the Baltimore Orioles and by Professor Ellen Peters, director of the Centre for Science Communication Research in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. They discuss the ongoing relationship between human expertise and statistical evidence.

Producers: Imogen Walford and Joe Kent

Think with Pinker is produced in partnership with The Open University.

ARCHIVE

Professor Steven Pinker has spent his life thinking about thinking. Now he wants us to join him. For this series Professor Pinker has created a critical thinking toolkit which he hopes will help all of us make better decisions about – well, everything. Steven will be joined by some big thinkers, and people who have to deal with the consequences of irrationality, as he sets out to steer us away from common fallacies and logical traps set by our own animal brains.