The Importance of Recognizing False Positives

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There will be a lot of false positives. We're not good at that as human beings and recognizing that is very important. People need a little bit of statistical education here to understand that. If you understand that this type of screening has little hope for benefits, but lots for harms, then you better do something. You do real prevention, for instance, stop smoking. Don't drink too much alcohol and move your body around.

Psychologist and author Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development talks about his book Gut Feelings with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Gigerenzer argues for the power of simple heuristics--rules of thumb--over more complex models when making real-world decisions. He argues that many results in behavioral economics that appear irrational can be understood as sensible ways of coping with complexity.