Heuristic #17: OVERLOOKING LUCK. Most people love to attach causal interpretations to the fluctuations of random processes. “It is a mathematically inevitable consequence of the fact that luck played a role in the outcome….Not a very satisfactory theory—we would all prefer a causal account—but that is all there is,” (page 179). When we remove causal stories and consider mere statistics we’ll observe regularities, what is called the regression to the mean.