....people may try to dismiss (not defy) the experimental data. Most commonly, by questioning whether the subjects interpreted the experimental instructions in some unexpected fashion—perhaps they misunderstood what you meant by “more probable”.
Which in fact turned out to be the case.
This was done—see Kahneman and Frederick (2002) - and the correlation between representativeness and probability was nearly perfect. 0.99, in fact.
So there’s no reason to look for other interpretations about what people meant by “more probable”. Anything else they might mean will correlate 0.99 with this, operationally it will be almost the same thing.
So this is what the public means by “more probable”. And it’s often what people mean in practice by “more probable” even when they’ve had training in probability theory and statistics.
“An additional group of 24 physicians, mostly residents at Stanford Hospital, participated in a group discussion in which they were confronted with their conjunction fallacies in the same questionnaire. The respondents did not defend their answers, although some references were made to ‘the nature of clinical experience.’ Most participants appeared surprised and dismayed to have made an elementary error of reasoning.”
They interpreted the question the standard way, and then later they remembered they were supposed to use probability.
Probability theory is still new. Most of it is newer than calculus. People consistently make gambling mistakes like the Monty Hall problem. The general belief is that you have to be real smart to get those things right. Just like you have to be real smart to learn calculus.
Is the word “representativeness” standard jargon? It’s such an ugly word, but if it’s well-established we can’t replace it with a better one.
So. People interpret “more probable” as “less surprising”. And most of the population does it, enough that this can be exploited reliably. This is potentially a very very profitable discussion.
Which in fact turned out to be the case.
This was done—see Kahneman and Frederick (2002) - and the correlation between representativeness and probability was nearly perfect. 0.99, in fact.
So there’s no reason to look for other interpretations about what people meant by “more probable”. Anything else they might mean will correlate 0.99 with this, operationally it will be almost the same thing.
So this is what the public means by “more probable”. And it’s often what people mean in practice by “more probable” even when they’ve had training in probability theory and statistics.
“An additional group of 24 physicians, mostly residents at Stanford Hospital, participated in a group discussion in which they were confronted with their conjunction fallacies in the same questionnaire. The respondents did not defend their answers, although some references were made to ‘the nature of clinical experience.’ Most participants appeared surprised and dismayed to have made an elementary error of reasoning.”
They interpreted the question the standard way, and then later they remembered they were supposed to use probability.
Probability theory is still new. Most of it is newer than calculus. People consistently make gambling mistakes like the Monty Hall problem. The general belief is that you have to be real smart to get those things right. Just like you have to be real smart to learn calculus.
Is the word “representativeness” standard jargon? It’s such an ugly word, but if it’s well-established we can’t replace it with a better one.
So. People interpret “more probable” as “less surprising”. And most of the population does it, enough that this can be exploited reliably. This is potentially a very very profitable discussion.