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It is a well-known fact in that people tend to think that they know more than they really do. Lots of psychology experiments have shown this. But really, it's a lot more to find out for yourself just how overconfident we human beings tend to be.
Self-Test of Overconfidence
For each of the following, give a 90% confidence interval (an upper and lower bound). That is to say, you should be confident enough in your interval that you would take a 9:1 bet that the actual number is between the range you give (or take a 1 to 9 bet that the actual number is outside your range). Write down or record what your ranges are before looking at the answers so that you don't cheat.
1.) Martin Luther King's age at death
2.) Length of the Nile River (in miles)
3.) Number of countries in OPEC
4.) Number of books in the Old Testament
5.) Diameter of the moon (in miles)
6.) Weight of an empty Boeing 747 (in pounds)
7.) Year in which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born
8.) Gestation period of an Asian elephant (in days)
9.) Air distance from London to Tokyo (in miles)
10.) Deepest known point in the ocean (in feet)
+ Show Spoiler +
Give yourself a point for each range that contained the actual value. If your confidence in your intervals were really 90%, that means on average at least 9 of your answers should be right. In previous experiments and surveys, this happens about 1% of the time or less. Are you surprised at your result?
Poll: How many did you get right?
(Vote): 10
(Vote): 9
(Vote): 8
(Vote): 7
(Vote): 6
(Vote): 5
(Vote): 4
(Vote): 3
(Vote): 2
(Vote): 1
(Vote): 0
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Baa?21246 Posts
Uhm, you didn't actually limit us. So I could do 1 - 1000000 for all my intervals...?
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if that's how much self-confidence you honestly have, then technically yes... would you also be willing to take a 1 to 9 bet that any of your answers are wrong though?
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A lot of these questions I have ABSOLUTELY no idea so I don't have confidence in my answer at all
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If you have no idea, then just put a really wide range 
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Baa?21246 Posts
Wow I totally forgot that 90% confidence interval. Sorry, it's late D:
(Never did pay attention in stats :D)
Doing them now...
edit: 8. Damn you Nile and elephants.
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On July 31 2009 00:31 azndsh wrote:If you have no idea, then just put a really wide range
I think I'll just put 1 to a million for all of them
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On July 31 2009 00:20 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Uhm, you didn't actually limit us. So I could do 1 - 1000000 for all my intervals...?
You need to think about if you would take the bet both ways, if you put 0 - a google plex you wouldn't actually take the bet against your range even if you got 9 dollars back if you put in one.
I'm not sure this proves what the OP thinks it does. Some of those (the elephant gestation period for example) are examples of things people are likely to get wildly wrong and you can pick and choose outliers like that to trip people up.
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I am not surprised at my results, the only one I had any idea about whatsoever was the first one (which I was off by 3 years). Titling the thread "overconfidence" probably makes people less confident in their predictions, though.
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On July 31 2009 00:32 Eniram wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2009 00:31 azndsh wrote:If you have no idea, then just put a really wide range I think I'll just put 1 to a million for all of them
I don't think you get the point of the experiment. But ya that would work if you seriously thought there were between 1 to 1 million contries in opec.
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South Africa4316 Posts
It's funny, I've come across this exact test three times in the last two weeks (all in psychology text books).
I'm busy writing a research proposal for my postgrad studies, and my topic is "the use and prevalence of heuristics in day traders," so I've been reading a ton of stuff on stock market psychology, and this specific overconfidence test is included in almost all of the books. I got 1/10 for it, and missed about 4 of them with about 5%, so clearly if I was just a bit less confident, I would have done much better :p
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The only thing I got right was the OPEC one  and I missed the MLK one because I misread it and thought it was the year of his death, although for what it's worth I was right on that =/
Edit: and until I read the rest of this thread, I completely misunderstood the point of the ranges, and used a different range (that I thought was reasonable for the specific questions) on each question.
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make this in the metric system and this test proves nothing but useless knowledge
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Calgary26003 Posts
This is stupid because the answers in themselves are shocking. Sure you should account for that in your interval, but the test is pitted against you. If they were questions with reasonable answers in everyday things this would hold a lot more weight for me.
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it seems that i am underconfident if anything.
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On July 31 2009 00:55 nK)Duke wrote:
make this in the metric system and this test proves nothing but useless knowledge If I'm understanding it right, it actually does prove that people tend to be overconfident in their knowledge (even of normally useless trivia) since they get to pick the range that they believe they could guess most of the answer in.
Edit: although Chill makes a good point as well.
Edit2: although do the people this test is used on know that it's random trivia? Or are they led to believe that the test is composed of everyday/common knowledge?
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On July 31 2009 00:46 Daigomi wrote:
It's funny, I've come across this exact test three times in the last two weeks (all in psychology text books).
I'm busy writing a research proposal for my postgrad studies, and my topic is "the use and prevalence of heuristics in day traders," so I've been reading a ton of stuff on stock market psychology, and this specific overconfidence test is included in almost all of the books. I got 1/10 for it, and missed about 4 of them with about 5%, so clearly if I was just a bit less confident, I would have done much better :p
That's a potentially interesting paper that I'd be interested in reading. I think the experiment is designed fine, just that the conclusion to be drawn is "people have no idea what a 90% confidence interval means" rather than "people are overconfident".
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EPT
