Thinking Analytically » Probability analysis

Randomness – Birds and Business

John — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:56:44 +0000

See the original post here. The post describes an interview with a birder and a doctor. They discuss similarities between pattern recognition in bird identification, medical diagnosis and business. Here’s an insightful quote:

HBR: Does randomness have a role to play in birding?

Sibley:

Even then these vagrant birds (ones not expected to be in a certain location) tend to show up in places that have a pattern of rare birds turning up. So they’re probably not random occurrence but a pattern we haven’t worked out yet.

ThinkingAnalytically discussion starters:

Can you think of a time that an apparent set of random data turned out to be an undiscovered pattern? What was it?
How do you avoid claiming a random situation too early?

Use the comments to contribute.

Purchase full the HBR article here.

Enough is Enough – Birds and Business

John — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:50:21 +0000

HBR: One of the toughest challenges in pattern recognition is knowing when you’ve looked at enough information to make a reliable judgment. At what point can you be certain that the pattern you’ve identified is real?

Sibley:

Identification is never 100% certain. Even field marks aren’t completely dependable, so you have to have an idea of how reliable each mark is or how reliable your judgment of it is, how well you saw it. [Example:] OK, there are three 90% characteristics that point this way and a couple of 50% or 70% characteristics that point that way, so I’ll go to the 90% side. The identification may or may not be correct, but that’s the more likely choice.

ThinkingAnalytically discussion starters:

How do you know when enough is enough?
How do you assign probabilities to the factors used to recognize patters?

Use the comments to contribute.

Purchase full the HBR article here.

The Analytics of Bird Watching

John — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:10:30 +0000

A few months ago I mentioned that the bookHow Doctors Think reminded me of an article I had read discussing analytics involved in bird identification and disease diagnosis. While going through some old files the other day in preparation for an office move, I actually found the original article! It wasn’t published in a birding or nature magazine. It wasn’t published in a medical journal. No, it was published in the August 2002 issue of Harvard Business Review!

The article is a Q&A with birders David Sibley and Julia Yoshida. Sibley is one of the foremost birding experts in the world. (I met him a few years ago and own several of his books.) Yoshida is both a birder and medical doctor. In the article they discuss the importance of pattern recognition to their respective fields and HBR makes the connections to business.

I found a number of insightful concepts in the article — too many to mention in one post. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few of them. Here’s a starter:

The ability to grasp complicated phenomena and discern possible trends from seemingly random events can be a source of competitive advantage, allowing managers to capitalize on opportunities before they are apparent to others…To thrive in an information-rich world, executives need to be adept at pattern recognition. They can learn a lot from expert-birdwatchers.

You can purchase the article at the HBR web-site.

Amazon carries the books mentioned in the article including: