Are You Overconfident?

Sunday, February 28, 2010
By dreeves

How to estimate the distance from the Earth to the Moon, if you're the Little Prince.

We shall now find out if Messy Matters readers are smarter than Mechanical Turkers. For each of the questions below, provide a numerical range that you are 90% sure contains the correct answer. In particular, if you have “no idea” then give a very wide range; and if you happen to be quite certain then give a narrow range.

If you are perfectly calibrated then 90% of your intervals (no more, no less) should contain the right answers.

Please try your best, but don’t look up the answers!

(If the quiz doesn’t show up in your news reader, click through to the post on messymatters.com.)

We’ll discuss the results in the next post.

PS: Here are the results.

Quiz from Decision Traps by Russo and Shoemaker. Image by Kelly Savage.

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