Two test questions from Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project (184-5, 192-3).
Q. In a family of six children, which birth order is more likely? BBBGGG or GBBGBG?
A. Most say the latter, but they are equally probable, equally random. People have a mental model of “randomness,” and the second matches it better than the first.
Q. One group was asked to estimate the product of 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1. Another group was asked to estimate the product of 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8.
A. The first group’s median answer was 2,250; the second group’s was 512. The answer is 40,320. Using 8 as a starting point tricked people into thinking the number was big (though not as big as it actually was). Starting with 1 tricked them into estimating small. Kahneman and Tversky calls this “anchoring”: Our guesstimates are affected by starting points, even when they are not relevant to the question at hand.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Ethics of Rhetoric in Times of War
What we say matters. And the way we say it matters. This is especially true in times…
How the State Failed Noelia Castillo
On March 26, Noelia Castillo, a twenty-five-year-old Spanish woman, was killed by her doctors at her own…
The Mind’s Profane and Sacred Loves
The teachers you have make all the difference in your life. That they happened to come into…
