Out of Proportion: With Guests Damon Lesmeister & Kelly Shue

<p>Many of the decisions we make require us to compare numbers. Which car is most fuel efficient? How is a stock performing relative to the market? How risky is one medication versus another? A problem arises when we fail to make these comparisons in the right units.</p><p>In this episode of <i>Choiceology with </i><a href="http://www.katherinemilkman.com/"><i>Katy Milkman</i></a>, we look at the mistakes we make when we overweight absolute numbers and neglect their relative value.</p><p><a href="https://www.damonlesmeister.com/people.html">Damon Lesmeister</a> is a wildlife biologist in Oregon who studies a very special bird: the northern spotted owl. This iconic animal is struggling to survive in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Among other challenges, the northern spotted owl is being crowded out of its habitat by an invasive species: the barred owl. Conservationists are now faced with a difficult decision, but one that is made more clear by properly comparing the relative sizes of the two owl populations.</p><p>Damon Lesmeister is a research wildlife biologist with the <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/">US Forest Service</a> and holds courtesy faculty appointments with <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/">Oregon State University</a> in the Departments of Fisheries and Wildlife, and Forest Engineering, Resources and Management.</p><p>Next, Yale finance professor <a href="https://som.yale.edu/faculty/kelly-shue">Kelly Shue</a> joins Katy to talk about places where non-proportional thinking is likely to occur and why it'’s such an easy mistake to make. She explains how the dollar value change of a share is much less important than the percentage change. Focusing solely on the dollar value can lead to consequential investor errors.</p><p>Kelly Shue is a finance professor at <a href="https://www.yale.edu/">Yale University</a> and serves as an associate editor at <i>The Journal of Finance</i> and <i>Journal of Financial Economics</i> She previously served as an editor at the <i>Review of Finance</i>.<