Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Finding the flaw in using the above statistics takes only one little bit of informa-
tion that many people overlook: The statistics are about the
teams
over the course
of decades; the average tenure for the
players
with a team is measured in a few
years. It doesn't matter if Team A beat Team B 10 straight times in the 1990s.
Chances are, none of the players who participated in that lopsided rivalry are on ei-
ther one of those teams any more. So, despite being really nifty information to look
at and excellent fodder for sports bar trash-talking, is any of it relevant enough to
take into account for
today's
game? How about just simply starting out with “is this
team good or bad?� and building from there?
And yet, people are addicted to seeing connections in information. Literally.
Scientific studies have shown that humans
want
to see order and connection. They
want
to determine cause and effect, but in their zealous pursuit of doing so, they see
patterns that aren't there. How often, after seeing a coin land on heads five times in
a row, have we said to ourselves—even momentarily—“The next one just
has
to be
tails!�? We all know that those five tosses have nothing at all to do with this next
one, but our mind tries to make the connection anyway. Thankfully, if asked what
the odds are of the next coin flip being tails, we would probably be able to shake
ourselves enough to still say “50/50,� but decisions are rarely that simple.
I
GNORING
R
ELEVANT
I
NFORMATION
Despite our obsession with ascribing meaning to information, typically it is not the
act of being
over-
aware of possible considerations that becomes a problem. More
often the failure happens when we decide that things are
not
important when they
really are. By deciding—even subconsciously—that something is
not
relevant to the
decision at hand, any calculations that would have included that information are ei-
ther skewed to some degree or rendered completely null. This is typically the most
problematic hitch that leads us to not act in a perfectly rational way.
The Monty Hall Problem
Excellent examples of people failing to calculate properly are exhibited in the way
they make decisions when put on the spot on TV game shows. When I was a kid in
the mid-1970s, I vaguely remember seeing
Let's Make a Deal
. At the time, I was
more amused by the adults wearing ridiculous costumes to get the host's attention
than I was by what has become an iconic statistical logic problem. However, one of
the staples of that show has become a classic example of the way the human brain
manages to neglect very important information needed for a calculation.
The
Monty Hall Problem
, named after the host of the show, comes across as a
deceptively simple decision. However, a staggering number of people get the actual
answer wrong. Even when asked to explain their decisions, the respondents often
