Thanksgiving makes me think of pecan pie and pecan pie makes me think of pareto optimality. What can I tell you? I’m an economist.

Unconscious bias is everywhere. Whether or not we take notice, bias is present in our daily lives, in our relationships, at work, and in interactions with complete strangers. Bias is what happens over time – we take in millions of pieces of information every day and categorize them into different patterns, or familiarities. And that is how bias helps us make decisions daily. However, by definition, bias is “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.”