Scientific Inquiry SCI 105'020

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Scientific Inquiry SCI 105.020

• The Psychology of Stupidity - I
• Something Out of Nothing

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Data, Information, and Knowledge

• Data
• Also known as random data, raw data
• Factual information (as measurements or
  statistics) used as a basis for reasoning,
  discussion, or calculation
• Information
• The communication or reception of knowledge or
  intelligence
• Presented as a message to another individual
• Knowledge
• The fact or condition of knowing something with
  familiarity gained through experience or
  association
• Presented as concepts, predicates, rules, etc

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Examples

• Lets look at some data about a weather data set
  concerning whether a game is played under
  different weather conditions
• The individual data entries, such as
  Outcast/Sunny, Humidity/High dont mean anything
  by themselves
• We can generate informative reports using these
  data
• Out of the 14 records, there are 6 with high
  humidity, 8 with normal humidity.
• We can also discover some patterns
• We are 85.7 confident that it will play when
  humidity is normal 75 confident that it will
  play when humidity is normal and its cold

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Illusions

• Human cognitive mechanisms do have flaws
• The Gateway Arch illusion (Gilovich, p17)
• A similar optical illusion caused by two arches
• Which one is bigger?
• The Muller Lyer illusion
• More illusions can be found at
• www.coolopticalillusions.com
• Whats more dangerous?
• The illusions are so strong thatit is not
  eliminated simply byknowing the correct answer

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Illusions on Random Events

• Finding patterns out of our observations is the
  right way to discover new knowledge
• But, be careful, overuse such strategies can also
  cause problem
• Erroneous beliefs are hard to eliminate once they
  are formed
• In this chapter, Gilovich emphasized on peoples
  erroneous intuitions about how random events
  should look

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Nature Abhors a Vacuum

• People are disposed to see order, pattern, and
  meaning in the world
• Human nature abhors a lack of predictability and
  the absence of meaning
• As a consequence, we tends to see order where
  there is none
• We simply tend to see something out of nothing
  for no good reasons
• Psychologists believe this is due to flaws in the
  cognitive machinery we use to comprehend the
  world

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Misconception of Random Data

• The dislike of randomness and seeking for order
  and patterns may leads to
• Cluster illusion
• The belief in a hot hand in basketball
• The regression fallacy
• The representative heuristic is a major
  contributor to these errors

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Cluster Illusions

• Erroneous human intuition about random events
• A random event shouldnt have any clusters at all
• Rather, it should be perfectly evenly distributed
• Coin-flipping exercise
• First, make up a 20-flip sequence
• Then, flip a coin 20 times
• Compare
• C2 test
• Can you reject the claim that the head-tail mix
  is evenly distributed?

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Representative Heuristic

• Read this paragraph and answer the question
• Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably
  helpful, but with little interest in people or
  the world of reality. He has a need for order
  and a passion for detail.
• Is Steve more likely to be salesperson or a
  librarian?

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The Regression Fallacy

• The Sports Illustrated jinx
• Which is more effective praise or punishment?