Did I get outsmarted by my wife today? [Gambler’s fallacy]

Frédéric Pattyn
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

The short answer is; YES without a doubt, and I know why (and not only because she’s an IQ powerhouse :p)! The question now is; will she outsmart you as well? And how is my wife being smarter than you relevant for your day to day, fast paced, innovative business decisions? Read and answer the below question:

The mean IQ of the population of eight graders in an city is known to be 100. You have selected a random sample of 50 childeren for a study of educational achievement. The first child tested has an IQ of 130. What do you expect the mean IQ to be for the whole sample? (A. Tversky & D. Kahneman)

  • How long did you take to decide your %?
  • Read it again, still the same %?
  • Did irrelevant ‘data’ of a picture of Chinese kids influence your decision?

If you are anything like me; Read it once, 5 seconds in did the math, made up my mind and was confident (because I consider myself a smart guy ;p ) that I was right:

Conclusion: I was off by less than 1%

Damn … read the logic, thought by myself; I fooled myself by taking a mental shortcut that I created when reading the research paper for the first time… and my mind happily took the eady way out … 5 seconds: < 1% off

When to my wife, asked the same question, it went quiet:

Conclusion: 5 minutes in she states: IQ of 101 — dead on

Why? She took the data, took the equation out of memory, filled it with the data and produced the correct answer … damn.

Here’s why it’s relevant to think about this: When taking 100 decisions a day; are you prone to the gambler’s fallacy as well? Feel confident about your decisions?

Would you, if you knew if you would take 5 minutes longer per decision; it would improve your average result (however it might be quantified) with less than 1%, would you take the time?

If you are anything like me; we think yes, but when taking our first decision of the day, we’ll take the fast round again while knowing better …

Have a great week!

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