Inaccurate Percentages

[Kakure]

People don't understand math but think they do, news at 11:00!

We are plagued by an enormous number of psychological biases that distort our perception of the world around us.

We are more highly attuned to loss (the times you fail with a 98% chance of success) than gain (the times you succeed with a 2% success chance). We have a tendency to attribute our successes to positive personal characteristics and our failures to external factors; I succeed because I am a good crafter and use my abilities optimally, but I fail because I am unlucky. We vastly overestimate our own capabilities and, more importantly, the accuracy of our own judgment. Something like 90% of drivers rate their own driving as above average, for instance.

(continued)

[Kakure]

When judging causality, we tend to place too much weight on anecdote and personal observation and far too little on objective data.

We are terrible - TERRIBLE - at estimating percentages and even worse at identifying randomness. Human beings excel at finding patterns and that skews our perception of randomness.

Notably, we have evidence from a diversity of fields suggesting that the worse people are at something, the more skewed their perception of their own abilities tends to be. Those who perform the worst on measures of multitasking are the ones who most overestimate their own capacity to multitask. People who perform the worst on math tests are the ones most overestimate their own math abilities.

When dealing with percentage and chance, a good rule of thumb is this:

If the percentage chance displayed on the screen doesn't seem right to you, it is because your perception is inaccurate, not the algorithm.

[CianaIezuborn]

When dealing with percentage and chance, a good rule of thumb is this:

If the percentage chance displayed on the screen doesn't seem right to you, it is because your perception is inaccurate, not the algorithm.

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