Systematic Bias

The central theme of the book is systematic bias although Lewis’s tendency to jump from topic to topic in a less than cohesive manner often obscures the central point that the book is attempting to make: that human beings are prone to making predictable errors and that awareness of the biases that lead to these errors could improve decision-making in many different areas of life.

The theme of systematic bias is introduced in Chapter 1 in which it is explored through the figure of Daryl Morey and his work for the NBA team the Houston Rockets: perhaps Lewis’s intention with this decision about how to structure his story is to hook readers of his earlier work Moneyball who are primarily interested in how these ideas impact professional sports. The effect, however, is to give an arguably excessive amount of emphasis to the work of one man...