All entries for Thursday 17 March 2011

A world of belated bias

I have unfortunately been neglecting my blogging once more. Times have filled with much work, some illness, and some being out of the county. This has led to a yet again unfortunate situation of a backlog of thoughts of our week and a halfs worth of work during our decision making module. These include a shocking realisation of how biased most decisions we make are, the many errors in judgement that again we may unknowingly make due to lack od due dilegence, the ridiculously complex methods to ensure our decisions are fully informed, my new found love for decision trees, and last but not least the difficulty in assigning value to judgements for decision tools!

But right now I shall start as is appropriate at the very beginning. Bias.

Our first day of lectures in this module was a revealing day. Through various example and simple quizzes we saw just how easy it was for us all to make make decisions, or guesses, based on complete bias. So many forms of bias exist and I think I'm guilty of most of them. While bias should be avoided when possible, I have to say I'm not over fussed about some of the biasses I usually have and it's unlikely I can rid bias out my life that easily. One major bias I must work to avoid however seems to be that of the confirmation trap. This is something I have unfortunately succumb to often and it has a deep impact on my ability to produce good pieces of work. The confirmation trap for those unaware of it is a bias that involves the search to validify and confirm a decision of choice we make and avoid any evidence that may suggest its falicy. For assignments this has a profound impact. A well thought analysis must examine all views, opnions and theories on a subject matter. If this bias exists however a very skwed view is presented and the analysis becomes weaks. I fear I am frequently guilty of this and must rid myself of this habbit. Its gonna be tough to do, but then again nothing worth doing is easy!

: 17 Mar 2011 21:47 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem