Friday, March 27, 2009

Experts Overrated? I want to be a fox!

I was drawn to this Kristof editorial someone emailed me at work (where I'm an expert of course -- but, aren't we all?!):

Nicholas D. Kristof: Want to play some darts?
Some quotes:
The best example of the awe that an "expert" inspires is the "Dr. Fox effect." It's named for a pioneering series of psychology experiments in which an actor was paid to give a meaningless presentation to professional educators.


The expert on experts is Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His 2005 book, "Expert Political Judgment," is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts' forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about.
The result? The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.


I can relate.

At my old job, we tried a Dr. Fox thing at a conference – we hired a comic to start his presentation as if he were an outside expert. We fed him some verbiage to make him sound current, then he started to twist it, and finally he just admitted and went on with a comedy routine that naturally ended up with various stupid jokes. It was funny. And, yes, people were fooled.

Another time, a colleague and I were presenting at a Networld+Interop session and we had a typo on a slide. So, my friend said: “Oh by the way, how many of you are aware of the “XH1.59” (or whatever the typo was) standard?” At least half the audience raised their hand.

Beyond being an expert, if this article is right, I want to be a fox! Not a "Dr. Fox" fake, but the fox that's more successful in predictions than a hedgehog. I always wanted to be a fox. Or foxy. Or something. Uh. Oops. I guess I'm no expert.

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