anonym comments on Calibration fail - Less Wrong

8 Post author: PhilGoetz 09 August 2009 05:15PM

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Comment author: gjm 09 August 2009 07:13:21PM 6 points [-]

In Douglas Hofstadter's article "On number numbness" (published in Scientific American and also in his book Metamagical Themas) he mentions that he did an estimation exercise with one of his (university) classes, asking them to estimate the height of the Empire State Building. The smallest answer: 50 feet. The largest: one mile. (I don't think he asked them for confidence intervals or anything of the kind.)

(A height of 50 feet means about 6 inches per floor.)

Comment author: anonym 09 August 2009 08:35:45PM 2 points [-]

One mile is a believable data point for somebody who knows it's really tall and has no clue how tall buildings generally are and has no skills in estimating or reasoning to be able to come up with a good estimate, but I think "50 feet" as an estimate is not a legitimate data point. It is much more likely that somebody was being a smart ass, or wanted to screw up the experiment and make Hofstadter look silly, or had never heard of the Empire State Building (assuming Hofstadter didn't imply that it's a really tall building) and was just guessing for a random building (which it would still be a bad estimate for, but much less so).

Comment author: RobinZ 10 August 2009 03:21:43PM 0 points [-]

The experiment took place in classroom in New York, if I recall.