Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Probably not for everyone — a bit too wordy even for me — but important reading regardless for those interested in justice and fairness. Noise hurts us disproportionately, and thus hurts us all. We all need to develop awareness, although not necessarily four hundred pages’ worth. This is more a book for policy makers and shapers than for us in the trenches.

I liked the breakdown of noise into categories: level noise (two different immigration judges, one approves 88% of cases, one approves 5%); pattern noise (close to, but not quite, bias); and occasion noise (judges issuing sterner sentences before lunch than after, or if the weather is crappy). I liked the attempts to differentiate noise from bias. I liked the suggestions for evaluating noise and for minimizing it. (I did not care for their using a smooth Gaussian in some examples, but can grudgingly understand why they did so).

Was entertaining but not amazing. It's got some good quotable facts. The practices from out are the "Noise Audit" where you find judgements in your organisation and attempt to measure it, and "Decision Hygine" can reduce it.

I probably couldn't give you a reproducable set of steps to do either of those things though. I think it's changed my thinking in one way, in that I now consider noise to be something to think on