Template:Did you know nominations/Heuristics in judgment and decision making

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Round symbols for illustrating comments about the DYK nomination The following is an archived discussion of Heuristics in judgment and decision making's DYK nomination. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page; such as this archived nomination"s (talk) page, the nominated article's (talk) page, or the Did you knowDYK comment symbol (talk) page. Unless there is consensus to re-open the archived discussion here. No further edits should be made to this page. See the talk page guidelines for (more) information.

The result was: rejected by  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC).

Heuristics in judgment and decision making[edit]

are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions?

  • Comment: This is an overview article that uses some text from pre-existing articles related to subtopics, specifically attribute substitution, but these only form a small proportion of the entire text.

Moved to mainspace by MartinPoulter (talk). Self nom at 22:33, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

  • Article reads a lot like an essay, especially with terms like "In vain...". — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:03, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm baffled by this. How exactly does it differ from an encyclopedic description of the subject, and what's wrong with "in vain"? If we replace the more bland phrase "Without success," what else needs to change? MartinPoulter (talk) 15:33, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • (ec)"Tversky and Kahneman asked subjects to consider a problem about random variation. Imagining for simplicity that exactly half of the babies born in a hospital are male, the ratio will not be exactly half in every time period. On some days, more girls will be born and on others, more boys. The question was, does the likelihood of deviating from exactly half depend on whether there are many or few births per day? It is a well-established consequence of sampling theory that proportions will vary much more day-to-day when the typical number of births per day is small. However, people's answers to the problem do not reflect this fact. They typically reply that the number of births in the hospital makes no difference to the likelihood of more than 60% male babies in one day. The explanation in terms of the heuristic is that people consider only how representative the figure of 60% is of the previously given average of 50%." - Random selection. How much of this uses the tone we're supposed to? The in-depth detail here is almost certainly UNDUE: we don't need to know what the question was, we want to know what significance their findings have as related to heuristics. "It is a well-established consequence" looks weaselly, unless explicitly stated by the source. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:44, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, but I'm not convinced. This amount of text is necessary to explain the question that people get wrong. It is not undue weight to explain what the question was. This is a standard example given in discussions of the topic, but it's spelled out at length to make it accessible to a lay audience. If you can phrase the same point in fewer words, then show me. Explaining "the findings" (that people answer the question wrongly) without explaining the question, and why the common answer is wrong, would be pointless and unhelpful. What alternative phrase do you suggest for "well-established consequence" for a basic truth of sampling theory? MartinPoulter (talk) 15:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment: I suspect Crisco 1492's concern is over the whole article, not just the sample that was quoted above. Pertaining to that sample, consider the following:

    Tversky and Kahneman asked subjects to consider a problem about random variation in male vs female hospital births: Does the likelihood of deviating from exactly half depend on whether there are many or few births per day? A consequence of sampling theory is that deviations will vary more when the number of births per day is small. Answers to the problem, however, do not reflect this. Subjects typically ignored hospital births in favour of total population and as a result arrived at what Tversky and Kahneman termed a "representativeness heuristic".

I am not suggesting my version above is correct; indeed, it would need to match sources. I have, however, tried to be more concise by removing weasel terms and redundancy.
I am reluctant to disagree with Crisco 1492's more extensive experience. It was, and it remains, my judgement that this article is within policy as required by item 3 of the edit notice to this template; more specifically, I judge the article to meet one of the two policies (WP:CV) and both guidelines (WP:CITE & WP:PLAG) as detailed in that notice – I WP:AGF on WP:NPOV as previously stated --Senra (talk) 20:15, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, over the whole article. Too much time spent talking about who says what, not enough giving a concrete overview. If everything is "according to...", it reads like a university paper. If something is generally agreed upon, we can state that it is or there is a general consensus. If something is not certain or controversial, you should double check WP:MEDRS to see if we should be quoting it at all. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:47, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I've already given further explanation above. You can check with WikiProject Psychology or WikiProject Medicine to see if this article and its sourcing are up to snuff. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
I would like to propose that this nomination be withdrawn. The article is still tagged {{essay like}} and the issues raised above have not been address. I communicated with the nom and received a courteous reply but nothing appears to have been done to the article since --Senra (talk) 12:34, 22 February 2013 (UTC)