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I stopped reading when I got the moon question pretty much dead on.

by byoung2 16y ago

byoung2 16y ago
Thanks for downvoting...here's more info: When we say we are sure about a certain fact, for example, we may well be right only half the time. To see how it works, try this little quiz: Give two estimates of the diameter of the moon in miles -- a high and a low one, so that there is about a 10 percent chance that the moon is bigger than the upper estimate and a 10 percent chance that it is smaller than the lower one. I know that the circumference of the Earth is about 25000 miles, and I know that circumference is pi * diameter, which makes the diameter of Earth about 8000 miles. I also know that the moon is about 1/4th the size of Earth, so I guessed 2000-2500 miles for its diameter. The correct answer is 2160, so I didn't see the merit in continuing to read an article about how people get overconfident when forecasting.
- nevernormal1 16y ago
  Interesting. One could have concluded that it was a bad example, but you concluded you have no overconfidence problem.
  - byoung2 16y ago
    you concluded you have no overconfidence problem No, you concluded that. I concluded that the article wasn't worth reading (largely because the author chose a bad example).
- abecedarius 16y ago
  Heh. I also calculated it from facts I knew, and got it wrong, even accounting for approximations and uncertainties. The facts I happened to know made for a trickier calculation. (The moon makes one pretty-circular orbit per month following Newton's laws; it subtends 1 degree in the sky. But actually it subtends 1/2 degree -- I haven't checked if this was my only error, but gosh, it sure is easy to goof.)
  - byoung2 16y ago
    Now there's a take on the authors thesis I missed the first time around. The fact that you can "know too much" and get the question wrong. In my example, I was so sure the Earth had a diameter or 25,000 miles, but I could have been completely wrong about that fact.

I stopped reading when I got the moon question pretty much dead on.

by byoung2 16y ago

I stopped reading when I got the moon question pretty much dead on.

Thanks for downvoting...here's more info: When we say we are sure about a certain fact, for example, we may well be right only half the time. To see how it works, try this little quiz: Give two estimates of the diameter of the moon in miles -- a high and a low one, so that there is about a 10 percent chance that the moon is bigger than the upper estimate and a 10 percent chance that it is smaller than the lower one. I know that the circumference of the Earth is about 25000 miles, and I know that circumference is pi * diameter, which makes the diameter of Earth about 8000 miles. I also know that the moon is about 1/4th the size of Earth, so I guessed 2000-2500 miles for its diameter. The correct answer is 2160, so I didn't see the merit in continuing to read an article about how people get overconfident when forecasting.

nevernormal1 16y ago
Interesting. One could have concluded that it was a bad example, but you concluded you have no overconfidence problem.
- byoung2 16y ago
  you concluded you have no overconfidence problem No, you concluded that. I concluded that the article wasn't worth reading (largely because the author chose a bad example).
abecedarius 16y ago
Heh. I also calculated it from facts I knew, and got it wrong, even accounting for approximations and uncertainties. The facts I happened to know made for a trickier calculation. (The moon makes one pretty-circular orbit per month following Newton's laws; it subtends 1 degree in the sky. But actually it subtends 1/2 degree -- I haven't checked if this was my only error, but gosh, it sure is easy to goof.)
- byoung2 16y ago
  Now there's a take on the authors thesis I missed the first time around. The fact that you can "know too much" and get the question wrong. In my example, I was so sure the Earth had a diameter or 25,000 miles, but I could have been completely wrong about that fact.