Thanks, Deb! I was speculating about how far out into the universe this would actually go (my husband wondered if it would get past the Milky Way). The conversion to light years is a nice touch.
I think it is interesting that as much as we know about anchoring and adjustment, we still have trouble adjusting enough when we deal with problems like this. I continue to be a bit shocked at the huge size of this number. For those who are not afraid of bringing gore into the classroom - here is another example from Plous: If all the human blood in the world were poured into a cube-shaped tank, how wide would the tank be? (Students think this example is a bit disgusting.) The tank would be a cube that is 870 feet wide. The answer assumes 5 billion people in the world and 1 gallon of blood per person 1 cubic foot will hold 7.5 gallons; 5 billion gallons equals 670 million cubic feet of blood; 870 feet * 870 feet * 870 feet = 670 million cubic feet People tend to anchor on the large number for the population and are then surprised that the container would be so small. Claudia Stanny -----Original Message----- From: Deb Briihl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 8:51 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Availability Heuristic Activities? Tried to send this yesterday, but I had posted 3 times already. Obviously, my original math was really off. I remember that I was trying to compensate for the fact that multiplying decimals left you with more decimals (so .1 * .1 = .01). I have tried to recalculate this and here is what I got. If the thickness of paper is .1, and 1 meter is 1000 mm and 1 km is 1000 m and 1 mile (for everyone who is metric impaired) is 1.61 km, then it would be 39,368,031,062,988,490,729,711 miles (approximately). The distance to the sun is 93,000,000 miles. The distance to the next nearest star (Proxima Centauri) from the sun is 4.3 light-years from the Sun.. A light-year equals 5.88 million million miles (9.46 million million kilometers). At 02:06 PM 3/20/2008 -0500, you wrote: >Assuming a sheet of paper is .1mm thick: > >.1mm x 2 (to the 100th power - lost my formatting here) = 1.27 x 10 (to >the 29th power) mm or 1.27 x 10 (to the 23rd power) km > >Or 800,000,000,000,000 times the distance between the earth and the sun >-- a bit more anchoring and adjustment at work here, eh, Deb? ;-) > >My students just can't believe this result. Of course, they want to know >where we'd get a sheet of paper that big! (And what would the square >mileage of such a sheet be - an additional problem for the math wonks >out there in TIPS-land!) > > From Plous, S. (1993). The psychology of judgment and decision making. >New York: McGraw-Hill. > >Plous has a quiz at the beginning of this text that is chock full of >good examples of heuristics, biases, and choice problems that typically >elicit various sorts of "irrational" decision making. He also provides >the answers and might have these indexed to the chapter where this is >discussed - either that or I annotated by copy (it is in another office >than where I am now). > > >Here is an example you can use to show when the availability heuristic >will produce a correct set of answers (if you want to talk about >Gigerenzer's argument that heuristics are quick and dirty ways to >usually get a good answer). > >Rate the following words on their relative frequency in language (the >Kucera-Francis word counts are provided next to each word): > > _____ BOTTLE K-F freq 50 > > _____ BUTTER K-F freq 100 > > _____ CHAOS K-F freq 9 > > _____ COTTAGE K-F freq 46 > > _____ PYTHON K-F freq 1 > > _____ VALLEY K-F freq 100 > >Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. >Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment >Associate Professor, Psychology >University of West Florida >Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751 > >Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 >e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ >Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm > >-----Original Message----- >From: Deb Briihl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:31 PM >To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) >Subject: Re: [tips] Availability Heuristic Activities? > >Almost to the moon (I forget how many miles it is). I typically start >singing the inchworm song (2 and 2 are 4, 4 and 4 are 8... - and for >those >of you who remember the old hair commercial of I told 2 friends, and >they >told 2 friends). After 9-10 folds, it is about as thick as their >textbook, >so I then state 2 textbooks, 4 textbooks, etc. > > >--- >To make changes to your subscription contact: > >Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Deb Dr. Deborah S. Briihl Dept. of Psychology and Counseling Valdosta State University Valdosta, GA 31698 (229) 333-5994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dbriihl/ Well I know these voices must be my soul... Rhyme and Reason - DMB --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
