What the psychologist Steven Pinker calls the “curse of knowledge” is a constant obstacle to clear communication: once you know a subject fairly well, it is enormously difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who doesn’t know it. My colleagues and I weren’t immune. When we started researching some statistical confusion, we’d habitually start by pinning down the definitions—but as we quickly took them for granted, we always had to remind ourselves to explain them to our listeners, too.
