My (so far untested, as far as I know) advice is to start off with a talk designed to give people the sense more is possible, i.e. that this stuff is deeply interesting and relevant and worth paying attention to, rather than trying to start teaching them something. Suppose you manage to teach them about a single bias; maybe base rate neglect, or availability bias, or so on. I’m having trouble thinking of a single bias that’s exciting enough for people to see benefits from knowing about it, but I know there are several that can be detrimental.
If the audience includes kids, hindsight bias is probably the easiest and most dramatic place to start—you can even do a demonstration with them as the subjects.
A favorite of mine is the Forer effect demonstration, where everyone gets a “personalized” horoscope, rates accuracy and then learns they’re all identical. Because that is easy and quick, gets a good laugh and directly relates to the Astrology class that is part of the raison d’etre of this course.
My (so far untested, as far as I know) advice is to start off with a talk designed to give people the sense more is possible, i.e. that this stuff is deeply interesting and relevant and worth paying attention to, rather than trying to start teaching them something. Suppose you manage to teach them about a single bias; maybe base rate neglect, or availability bias, or so on. I’m having trouble thinking of a single bias that’s exciting enough for people to see benefits from knowing about it, but I know there are several that can be detrimental.
If the audience includes kids, hindsight bias is probably the easiest and most dramatic place to start—you can even do a demonstration with them as the subjects.
Demonstration is good. I’d try to do several.
A favorite of mine is the Forer effect demonstration, where everyone gets a “personalized” horoscope, rates accuracy and then learns they’re all identical. Because that is easy and quick, gets a good laugh and directly relates to the Astrology class that is part of the raison d’etre of this course.