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Date
Being right is important. Getting to facts is important. This has been a theme of People, Planet, Profits and Projects – avoiding bias, seeking to remove emotion from issues such as climate change and sustainability thinking, and in particular the effects of such on projects and project managers. And even if those aren't of immediate concern to you, wouldn't it be better to have better, more accurate estimates for your project?
To that end, we draw your attention to a recent episode of an excellent podcast called Hidden Brain. The episode is called: I’m Right, You’re Wrong.
There’s a very interesting part to the podcast that has to do with something called the Surprisingly Popular answer. It explains how you can mine data from a crowd with 20% (or greater) improvements over a simple democratic vote. It relies on the distributed expertise in the crowd who may ‘know better’, and requires the addition of a subtly different additional question when asking a group to make a determination about a factual answer, or even to zero in on a good estimate of a sales price for a piece of artwork.
The podcast explains this very well, but if you aren’t in the mood to listen to it now, we go to Princeton University’s website for an excellent summary:
The researchers tested their algorithm through multiple surveys conducted on various populations. In one test, they asked people a yes-or-no question, Is Philadelphia the capital of Pennsylvania? Respondents also were asked to predict the prevalence of “yes” votes. Because Philadelphia is a “large, historically significant city,” most people in the group thought that, yes, it is the capital of Pennsylvania — Harrisburg is in fact the state’s capital. In addition, the people who mistakenly thought Philadelphia is the state capital also predicted that a very high percentage of people would answer “yes.”
Meanwhile, a certain number of respondents knew that the correct answer is “no.” But these people also anticipated that many other people would incorrectly think the capital is Philadelphia, so they also expected a very high percentage of “yes” answers. Thus, almost everyone expected other people to answer “yes,” but the actual percentage of people who did was significantly lower. “No” was the surprisingly popular answer because it exceeded expectations of what the answer would be.
Across all topics, the researchers found that the “surprisingly popular” algorithm reduced errors by 21.3 percent compared to simple majority votes, and by 24.2 percent compared to basic confidence-weighted votes (where people express how confident they are in their answers). It also reduced errors by 22.2 percent compared to answers with the highest average confidence levels. On the 50 test questions related to state capitals — such as the Harrisburg-Philadelphia question — the SP method reduced incorrect decisions by 48 percent compared to the majority vote.
Perhaps this could be adapted to getting more accurate project time and cost estimates?
Here's a figure from the Nature article.
Additional links on the Surprisingly Popular methodology:
http://news.mit.edu/2017/algorithm-better-wisdom-crowds-0125
http://lesswrong.com/lw/okv/why_is_the_surprisingly_popular_answer_correct/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v541/n7638/full/nature21054.html?foxtrotcallback=true
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: July 28, 2017 11:58 PM |
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