Trust seems to be a rare commodity these days. Game theory helps us understand how distrust grows within a society and---encouragingly---suggest ways in which we might stop the rot. Nicky Case has brought this dry subject matter to life via a wonderful interactive description of how (dis)trust evolves. It's about 30 minutes long. Just play it. … [Read more...]
Game theory and the Trump dossier
Security expert Bruce Schneier believes that a game-theoretic assessment of whether to release the Trump dossier supports release---regardless of your political affiliation or whether you believe the contents. That's the thing with formal analysis---it clarifies the situation and, sometimes, results in a trivial decision-making process. … [Read more...]
Idiosyncratic Rater Effect
A colleague of mine cautions that performance ratings say more about the marriage of the person doing the assessing than the performance of the person being assessed. Turns out she may have a point. Most people have some experience with performance appraisals. Maybe as part of an annual salary review. Or even just completing a customer satisfaction survey. It's become a pretty ubiquitous process … [Read more...]
Survival bias
This strip from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is the best description of survival bias I've come across. It's a pernicious problem in day-to-day decision-making. Modern, sensationalist news reporting reinforces it. Frightening, surprising. "man bites dog" stories survive. Stories about everyday dangers end up in the bin. When I was a child, my parents would tell me to go to school through … [Read more...]
RIP polling
Polling died last night. It's been terminally ill for a while now. The predictions for the UK general election in 2015 were abysmal. Brexit polls were unreliable. And polls put the Scottish independence referendum result in 2014 as a close call when it was a resounding "No". After its performance in last night's US presidential election, we have to reach for the life support switch. Here are … [Read more...]