The Dunning-Kruger Effect Isn't What You Think It Is - Scientifc American

[BootinUp]

The Dunning-Kruger Effect Isn’t What You Think It Is

The least skilled people know how much they don't know, but everyone thinks they are better than average

By Eric C. Gaze, The Conversation US on May 23, 2023

The following essay is reprinted with permission fromThe ConversationThe Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

John Cleese, the British comedian, once summed up the idea of the Dunning–Kruger effect as, “If you are really, really stupid, then it’s impossible for you to know you are really, really stupid.” A quick search of the news brings up dozens of headlines connecting the Dunning–Kruger effect to everything from work to empathy and even to why Donald Trump was elected president.

As a math professor who teaches students to use data to make informed decisions, I am familiar with common mistakes people make when dealing with numbers. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the idea that the least skilled people overestimate their abilities more than anyone else. This sounds convincing on the surface and makes for excellent comedy. But in a recent paper, my colleagues and I suggest that the mathematical approach used to show this effect may be incorrect.

After giving students the logic test, Dunning and Kruger divided them into four groups based on their scores. The lowest-scoring quarter of the students got, on average, 10 of the 20 questions correct. In comparison, the top-scoring quarter of students got an average of 17 questions correct. Both groups estimated they got about 14 correct. This is not terrible self-assessment by either group. The least skilled overestimated their scores by around 20 percentage points, while the top performers underestimated their scores by roughly 15 points.

There are three reasons Dunning and Kruger’s analysis is misleading.

The worst test-takers would also overestimate their performance the most because they are simply the furthest from getting a perfect score. Additionally, the least skilled people, like most people, assume they are better than average. Finally, the lowest scorers aren’t markedly worse at estimating their objective performance.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dunning-kruger-effect-isnt-what-you-think-it-is/

[Permanut]

1. Apologies to Dunning and Kruger..

But I'm still going with John Cleeae on this one.

[DonCoquixote]

2. has this person been a teacher?

"But according to the work of my colleagues and me, the reality is that very few people are truly unskilled and unaware." Sorry, America is full such people.

[BootinUp]

3. It might be interesting to look into his work. nt

[Jim__]

4. He is Senior Lecturer of Mathematics, Bowdoin College

From The Conversation

Eric Gaze directs the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) program at Bowdoin College, is Chair of the Baldwin Center for Learning and Teaching, and is a Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics Department. He is the current President of the National Numeracy Network (NNN 2013 – 2019), and a past chair of SIGMAA-QL (2010-12). He has a QR textbook published with Pearson, Thinking Quantitatively: Communicating with Numbers 2e, with blog https://thinkingquantitatively.wordpress.com/ , and has written a column, Ratiocination, for the NNN website: http://serc.carleton.edu/nnn/columns.html . Eric has given talks and led workshops on the topics of QR Across the Curriculum, Creating a QR Entry Point Course, Writing with Numbers, QR Assessment, and Running a QR Program; and has served on review teams of QR programs. Eric is the Principal Investigator for a NSF TUES Type I grant (2012-14), Quantitative Literacy and Reasoning Assessment (QLRA) DUE 1140562. This collaborative project builds on Bowdoin College's QR instrument which is used for advising purposes and is available to interested schools. Prior to coming to Bowdoin, Eric led the development of a Masters in Numeracy program for K-12 teachers at Alfred University as an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Education.

[Jim__]

5. Somewhat ironic. Knowing about the Dunning-Kruger Effect may not have made us as ...

... knowledgeable about human psychology as we thought it did.

[BootinUp]

6. The common(ly) wrong description of it always sounded a little gimicky.

And I had never looked into the details before. I like the anaylsis in this article.