A Different Viewpoint (Part 2 of 2)

#SunilFridayThought #Friday Thought 97

Sometimes numbers can play a game on you! Remember the question I posed in the previous part ? I received many comments on the article as public comments as well as direct messages. To keep the example simple and not to confuse with other complications, let's say those were tennis coaching academies that coached professional tennis players.

Let's say you happened to attend the function of top-500 professional tennis players. Players from the 'red-academy' wore red tee-shirts while the ones from the 'blue-academy' wore blue tee-shirts. You were surprised to find that 499 out of 500 top players wore red tee-shirt while there was only one player wearing a blue tee-shirt. 499 out of 500 tennis players came from the 'red-academy' while only one (say ranked #5) came from the blue-academy. Which academy are you likely to recommend to the new student?

If we put this information in a table it appears like shown here in the table, It is quite tempting to recommend the red academy...isn't it? After all 99.80% of professional top-500 players come from the red-academy?

Let's explore a little more. Please remember that this is an hypothetical example created to make a point. But in real life, there are many close examples. What happens if we find out about the players who did not make it to top-500? If we fill in the information it may be like this: (Note that the previously available information has not changed)

It seems the red-academy took 9,99,989 students and coached them. Out of which only 499 made it to top 500. All others could not make it in that group. While blue academy coached only 11. And one of them made to top 500. If you had this information, are you still sure that you would recommend the red-academy? Obviously the answer depends on lot many factors if everything else were similar would you not have second thoughts?

Why did this happen? When we saw the first set of data - it conveyed "Most of the successful players (top-500) come from the red-academy" But subconsciously we also concluded that "Most of the players from the red-academy are successful (top-500)". Read the sentences again. The first conclusion is obvious and correct. The second one may or may not be. In this case it was outright wrong!

You may think this does not happen to me. You may be wrong! Psychology says that it happens more than you realize. Imagine you read the an article in the film magazine that said all (or most) of the male and female superstars were backbenchers in schools. (Remember the article does not say that most of the backbenchers are superstars which you might conclude). However after reading the article many may think that it pays to be a backbencher! People actually make such arguments. Another common argument after reading stories of millionnaires is that it pays to 'take a drop from school'. Remember, most of millionnaires may be drop outs, most of the drop outs are not millionnaires!! The data will look exactly like the example shown earlier here.

Interesting, isn't it? Do share your views and experiences.

Sunil Bhave has written over 90 interesting articles and many interesting posts, several of them before starting Friday Thought series. Read Sunil's previous articles and posts. Sunil is an international certified executive coach and certified transformational leadership coach with vast industry experience, Business and Strategy Consultant, Management Development Professional with specialization on creativity, innovation and transformations. He regularly conducts workshops and speaks at many forums.

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