90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, March 11, 2016

A Simple Logic Question That Most Harvard Students Get Wrong

Harvard students get near-perfect SAT scores. These are smart, smart kids. So they shouldn't have trouble with a simple logic question, right?

Try the following puzzle:

A bat and ball cost $1.10.

The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

Scroll down for the answer ...

You probably answered 10¢. That's what most Harvard students answered.

But the real answer is 5¢.

Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman explains why most people get this wrong:

A number came to your mind. The number, of course, is 10: 10¢. The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing, and wrong. Do the math, and you will see. If the ball costs 10¢, then the total cost will be $1.20 (10¢ for the ball and $1.10 for the bat), not $1.10. The correct answer is 5¢. It is safe to assume that the intuitive answer also came to the mind of those who ended up with the correct number—they somehow managed to resist the intuition.

Many thousands of university students have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle, and the results are shocking. More than 50% of students at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton gave the intuitive—incorrect—answer. At less selective universities, the rate of demonstrable failure to check was in excess of 80%. The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.

This excerpt comes from Kahneman's 2011 book, "Thinking, Fast And Slow," which posits that we have an intuitive mental system and a logical mental system, and we often use the wrong one at the wrong time.

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In Florida Thursday night, Republican presidential candidates took on the H-1B visa program in a way they have never done before. They said the program is being abused, needs reform and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, in particular, seemed to recommend ending it.

The attention is due to the layoff last year of Disney IT workers, most who were working in Orlando. Some of those workers had to train visa-holding replacements. Disney laid off between 200 to 300 IT workers after bringing in IT contractors that are heavy users of the visa.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has supported an H-1B cap increase, and has said little about the visa-related IT layoffs at Disney or any other place, offered an extended critique of the H-1B program.

Rubio faulted, in particular, the use of visas by large IT services companies, pointing to firms based in India, in particular. He said H-1B program abuses take jobs from U.S. workers.

When it was his turn to talk about the visa, Trump, the billionaire businessman, began with an admission. "First of all, I know the H-1B very well, and it's something that I frankly use and I shouldn't be allowed to use -- we shouldn't have it," said Trump. He explained himself by saying the visa is available to use and "I'm a businessman."

The frontrunner has sent out confusing signals about the H-1B program.

At last week's debate, Trump said he was "softening" his position on the visa. But immediately following the debate, he issued a statement saying that his remarks were about immigration, and not the non-immigrant H-1B visa.

In that post-debate statement at the time, Trump said: "I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program."

Last night, Trump seemed more focused, certain -- even radical. He talked about ending the visa. "It's very bad for our workers and it's unfair for...

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Friday, March 11, 2016

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