Today's post, Useful Statistical Biases was originally published on April 1, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki):

If you know an estimator has high variance, you can intentionally introduce bias by choosing a simpler hypothesis, and thereby lower expected variance while raising expected bias; sometimes total error is lower, hence the "bias-variance tradeoff". Keep in mind that while statistic bias might be useful, cognitive biases are not.

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