What is Base Rate Neglect?
Base rate neglect is a term used in cognitive psychology and the decision sciences to explain how human reasoners, in making inferences about probability, often tend to ignore the background frequencies. For example, if the probability of any given woman having breast cancer is known to be 1/10,000, but a test on 10,000 women gives 100 positive results, reasoners will tend to overestimate the probability that any one of the women testing positive actually have cancer, rather than considering the possibility of false positives. The analysis of base rate neglect is relatively recent within psychology, often considered a part of the heuristics and biases field. Rather than assuming that human beings are always rational thinkers, psychologists in this field explore the ways in which human judgements systematically deviate from the axioms of probability theory. These deviations occur because humans are often forced to make quick judgements based on scant information, and because the judgeme
Newell and Simon have described problem solving as a search. What is the search looking for? Define the following terms: initial state, goal state, operators, and problem space. How do algorithms differ from heuristics? Which one guarantees a solution to a problem? Which one is efficient with respect to the amount of time and energy devoted to finding a solution? How does the difference-reduction (or hill climbing) heuristic differ from means-ends analysis? In the agents and smugglers problem done in class, you reached a point where the correct step appeared to take you farther from the goal (approximately at move #6). Why do people resist or hesitate at this point? Under which circumstances do the use of pictures or diagrams assist us in solving problems? Why do researchers use computer models to test their theories? What are the main advantages of doing this? Based on the research reported by Gick and Holyoak (1980), under what conditions will one use an analogy to solve a problem? W
