Wherever There Is Judgment, There Is Noise

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There is very little reason to doubt them. The results that havent held up typically small studies with effects that are too large to be believable. People don't know that they have a noise problem. In half o the time, it more than 55 %. This gave us complete news and that's when i decided that maybe this is a big topic."

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients. Now imagine that the same doctor making a different decision depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. This is an example of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

Shermer speaks with Nobel Prize winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman about the detrimental effects of noise and what we can do to reduce both noise and bias, and make better decisions in: medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection.