I remember this headline went viral: “Nearly half of the men say they do most of the homeschooling……three percent of women agree.”
Men Vs Women in Memory Of Events
I bring this up not to debate who’s right, but because it’s a great example of something called egocentric bias: Most people think they do most of the work.
For example, researchers have asked authors of multi-author papers what percentage of the work they personally did, and when they add up those percentages, the sum is on average140 percent.
When couples are asked to estimate how much of the housework they do, the combined total is almost always over 100%. Now you might think this is because people want to appear more helpful than they actually are, but that’s not it.
Couples remember fights differently
When couples are asked what fraction of the fights they start or how much of the mess is theirs, the total is again over a hundred. People think they do more of the work, but they also think they cause more of the problems. So why is this?
I think it’s simply because you experience and remember vividly all of what you do, but not all of what everyone else does, so naturally you overestimate your own contributions and underestimate others. And I think this bias leads us to underestimate the influence of other things on our lives like the role luck plays in our success.
Take hockey players, for example. If you ask a professional hockey player how they managed to reach the NHL, they might mention their hard work, determination, great coaches, their parent’s willingness to get up at 5 AM, and so on, but they probably won’t acknowledge how lucky they were to be born in January.
And yet, in many years 40%of hockey players selected into top tier leagues are born in the first quarter of the year, compared to just 10%in the fourth quarter; an early birthday can make you up to four times as likely to be a pro hockey player. And the reason for this disparity is presumably because the cutoff date for kids hockey leagues is January 1st.
Luck and Statistics
Those born in the first part of the year are a little older and so on average bigger and faster than kids in their league born late in the year. Now as they grow up, this difference should eventually shrink to nothing, but it doesn’t.
Because the young kids who share the most promise are given more time on the ice and enter more tournaments, where they receive better coaching and improve their skills. And these advantages compound year after year, so by the time you get to the pros, birthdays are heavily skewed towards the start of the year. But does any professional hockey player feel thankful for their birthday?
Probably not. And we are all like that, largely oblivious to the fortunate events that support our success. Probably the most significant bit of luck many of us enjoy is being born into a prosperous country; around half the variance in income received by people around the world is explained by their country of residence and that country’s income distribution. If you were born in Burundi, for example, which has the world’s lowest gross national income per capita of just 730 dollars a year, it doesn’t matter how smart or hard-working you are; you’re unlikely to earn much as an adult. Now many people get offended if you point out how big a role chance plays in their success and I get it. If we are just a product of our circumstances, then our hard work and our talent seem to count for nothing.
People think it has to be either skill or luck that explains success, but the truth is you need both. Take these eight-track and field world records: all the athletes who achieve these records are obviously world class, extremely dedicated, and talented and yet, when they achieved their world records, seven out of eight had a tailwind.
Now, these athletes all had the ability to win a gold medal, but to set the world record required a bit of luck as well. The importance of luck increases the greater the number of applicants applying for just a few spaces. Consider the most recent class of NASA astronauts.
From over 18,300 applicants in 2017, only 11 were selected and went on to graduate from the astronaut training program.
Now we can make a toy model of the selection process. Let’s assume that astronauts are selected mostly based on skill, experience, and hard work, but also say five percent as a result of luck — fortunate circumstances.
For each applicant, I randomly generated a skill score out of a hundred, and I also randomly generated a luck score out of a hundred. Then I added those numbers together, weighted in the 95-to-5 ratio to get an overall score. This score represents the selector’s judgments, meaning the top 11 by this metric would become astronauts.
And I repeated this simulation a thousand times representing a thousand different astronaut selections. And what I found was the astronauts who were picked were very lucky; they had an average luck score of 94.7. So how many of the selected astronauts would have been in the top 11 based on skill alone?
The answer was, on average, only 1.6. That means, even with luck accounting for just 5% of the outcome, 9 or maybe 10 of the 11 applicants selected would have been different if luck played no role at all. When competition is fierce, being talented and hard-working is important, but it’s not enough to guarantee success.
You also need to catch a break.
Largely, I think we’re unaware of our good luck because, by definition, it’s not something we did. Like the housework done by your significant other, it goes unappreciated.
Read the full article on this link.
Men Vs Women in Memory Of Events
I bring this up not to debate who’s right, but because it’s a great example of something called egocentric bias: Most people think they do most of the work.
For example, researchers have asked authors of multi-author papers what percentage of the work they personally did, and when they add up those percentages, the sum is on average140 percent.
When couples are asked to estimate how much of the housework they do, the combined total is almost always over 100%. Now you might think this is because people want to appear more helpful than they actually are, but that’s not it.
Couples remember fights differently
When couples are asked what fraction of the fights they start or how much of the mess is theirs, the total is again over a hundred. People think they do more of the work, but they also think they cause more of the problems. So why is this?
I think it’s simply because you experience and remember vividly all of what you do, but not all of what everyone else does, so naturally you overestimate your own contributions and underestimate others. And I think this bias leads us to underestimate the influence of other things on our lives like the role luck plays in our success.
Take hockey players, for example. If you ask a professional hockey player how they managed to reach the NHL, they might mention their hard work, determination, great coaches, their parent’s willingness to get up at 5 AM, and so on, but they probably won’t acknowledge how lucky they were to be born in January.
And yet, in many years 40%of hockey players selected into top tier leagues are born in the first quarter of the year, compared to just 10%in the fourth quarter; an early birthday can make you up to four times as likely to be a pro hockey player. And the reason for this disparity is presumably because the cutoff date for kids hockey leagues is January 1st.
Luck and Statistics
Those born in the first part of the year are a little older and so on average bigger and faster than kids in their league born late in the year. Now as they grow up, this difference should eventually shrink to nothing, but it doesn’t.
Because the young kids who share the most promise are given more time on the ice and enter more tournaments, where they receive better coaching and improve their skills. And these advantages compound year after year, so by the time you get to the pros, birthdays are heavily skewed towards the start of the year. But does any professional hockey player feel thankful for their birthday?
Probably not. And we are all like that, largely oblivious to the fortunate events that support our success. Probably the most significant bit of luck many of us enjoy is being born into a prosperous country; around half the variance in income received by people around the world is explained by their country of residence and that country’s income distribution. If you were born in Burundi, for example, which has the world’s lowest gross national income per capita of just 730 dollars a year, it doesn’t matter how smart or hard-working you are; you’re unlikely to earn much as an adult. Now many people get offended if you point out how big a role chance plays in their success and I get it. If we are just a product of our circumstances, then our hard work and our talent seem to count for nothing.
People think it has to be either skill or luck that explains success, but the truth is you need both. Take these eight-track and field world records: all the athletes who achieve these records are obviously world class, extremely dedicated, and talented and yet, when they achieved their world records, seven out of eight had a tailwind.
Now, these athletes all had the ability to win a gold medal, but to set the world record required a bit of luck as well. The importance of luck increases the greater the number of applicants applying for just a few spaces. Consider the most recent class of NASA astronauts.
From over 18,300 applicants in 2017, only 11 were selected and went on to graduate from the astronaut training program.
Now we can make a toy model of the selection process. Let’s assume that astronauts are selected mostly based on skill, experience, and hard work, but also say five percent as a result of luck — fortunate circumstances.
For each applicant, I randomly generated a skill score out of a hundred, and I also randomly generated a luck score out of a hundred. Then I added those numbers together, weighted in the 95-to-5 ratio to get an overall score. This score represents the selector’s judgments, meaning the top 11 by this metric would become astronauts.
And I repeated this simulation a thousand times representing a thousand different astronaut selections. And what I found was the astronauts who were picked were very lucky; they had an average luck score of 94.7. So how many of the selected astronauts would have been in the top 11 based on skill alone?
The answer was, on average, only 1.6. That means, even with luck accounting for just 5% of the outcome, 9 or maybe 10 of the 11 applicants selected would have been different if luck played no role at all. When competition is fierce, being talented and hard-working is important, but it’s not enough to guarantee success.
You also need to catch a break.
Largely, I think we’re unaware of our good luck because, by definition, it’s not something we did. Like the housework done by your significant other, it goes unappreciated.
Read the full article on this link.
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