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the studies we have assembled, taken together, suggest that stable pattern noise is actually more significant than the other components of system noise.
Overall, it appears that pattern noise contributes more than level noise.
share of pattern noise in that total was roughly constant:
level noise is the only form of noise that organizations can (sometimes) monitor without conducting noise audits.
If there is more pattern noise than level noise, then these already-shocking findings understate the magnitude of the noise problem by at least a factor of two.
next step is to analyze pattern noise by separating its two components.
The variability of average sentencing among judges is already shocking.
differences are highly personal but stable.
In all these studies, individuals generally did not agree with one another, but they remained quite stable in their judgments. This “consistency without consensus,” in the researchers’ words, provides clear evidence of stable pattern noise.
conclusion was unequivocal: this stable pattern noise was almost four times larger than level noise (stable pattern noise accounted for 26%, and level noise 7%, of total variance).
The most important component of system noise is the one we had initially neglected: stable pattern noise,
Noise is mostly a product not of level differences but of interactions:
Noise is mostly a by-product of our uniqueness, of our “judgment personality.” Reducing level noise is still a worthwhile objective, but attaining only this objective would leave most of the problem of system noise without a solution.
noise is rarely mentioned as a major factor in judgment.
Why do we never invoke noise
our ordinary way of making sense of the world around us makes it all but impossible to recognize the role of noise.
a
success story explains itself once the outcome is known.
important gambles of the past easily become acts of genius or folly when their outcome is known.
psychological bias
fundamental attribution error is a strong tendency to assign blame or credit to agents for actions and outcomes that are better explained...
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bias, hin...
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another explanation for poor judgments has become common in recent decades: psychological bias.
research in psychology and behavioral economics has documented a long list of psychological biases:
A psychological bias that is identified only after the fact can still provide a useful, if tentative, explanation if it also offers a prediction about the future.
empty explanations
prevalent need for causal stories that make sense of experience.
We naturally attend to the particular, following and creating causally coherent stories about individual cases, in which failures are often attributed to errors, and errors to biases.
Noise is inherently statistical:
variability in the backward-looking statistics
Causally, noise is nowhere; statistically, it is everywhere.
Causes are natural; statistics are difficult.
The figure/ground demonstrations are an apt metaphor for our intuitions about bias and noise: bias is a compelling figure, while noise is the background to which we pay no attention.
That is how we remain largely unaware of a large flaw in our judgment.
can you tell if there was noise?”
“We are rightly focused on reducing biases. Let’s also worry about reducing noise.”
first step
issue that deserves attention.
recommend a noi...
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Noise is the variability of these judgments.
there can be a large amount of noise even in the judgments of competent and well-trained professionals.
replacing judgment with rules or algorithms is an option that you should consider, as it will eliminate noise entirely.
The task of improving judgment is as urgent as ever, and it is the topic of this part of the book.
most problems, the characteristics of superior judges are harder to discern.
approaches to the reduction of judgment errors.
many attempts to counteract psychological biases, with some clear failures and some clear successes.
Appendix B provides an example of a bias checklist
main focus in this part of the book: the fight against noise.
decision h...
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but for ease of exposition, each chapter emphasizes a single decision hygiene strategy.
