Noise in Judgement
'Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement' by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein is one of my top recommended readings. While I'm still very much a junior behavioural scientist, as I read I found myself connecting the insights to my experiences within my own domains of expertise.
The authors make use of Pythagorean theorem and triangles to explain the relationship between different components of error within human judgement. But what I liked most were the visualisations.
I've recreated the key diagram as an interactive infographic. Clicking on a component will render a description below the diagram:
Pattern Noise²
Pattern noise is the average deviation of a judge's judgement from their mean. We vary in the information we have access to, how we access it, and how we interpret it.
For example, one may find a specific interviewer to be generally harsh in appraising candidates. But their harshness will not be perfectly consistent from candidate to candidate. In fact, it might vary widely dependent on when they last ate (Occasion Noise) and their personal beliefs about what makes a good worker (Stable Pattern Noise).
Pattern noise is split into two components. Squaring both and adding gives use the total square pattern noise:
- Occasion Noise is the influence of transient factors that change over short periods of time, often from one case to the next. Mood, energy levels, and hunger to name a few.
- Stable Pattern Noise is the influence of stable factors such as a tendency to favour candidates from a particular educational institution or the dislike of certain hairstyles. They do change but not so readily, i.e. they are stable.
Sources
[book] Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement
. 2021. D Kahneman, O Sibony, C R Sunstein [Pub] Harper Collins [ISBN] 978-0-00-830903-9.
[book] Knowledge and decisions
. 1996. T Sowell [Pub] Basic Books [ISBN] 978-0465037384.