Week 14 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 14 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 51–62 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (19–23 min total)

• The Most Common Cognitive Bias — Veritasium
• Heuristics and Biases (Tversky & Kahneman) — The Business Psychologist
• Planning Fallacy — The Decision Lab

① Look for the test that could fail

Chapter 14, Section “Catch confirmation bias in the rule-discovery task” · Session 1, Segment 1, “The rule-discovery task” · Remember: a test that could not have failed tells you very little, so aim your next test where your guess would break.

• The Most Common Cognitive Bias — Veritasium — a five-minute video in which people on the street try the number-triple game the chapter describes, and most keep testing triples that fit their guess; watch how long it takes anyone to try a triple that could get a "no". (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
• Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark — LessWrong — a short essay that walks through the same number game and argues that the useful test is the one aimed where your idea predicts a "no"; read the main post and skip the comment thread. This builds on Week 13's work with testable claims and predictions that could fail. (reading, 5–7 min)

② Shortcuts that steer your estimates

Chapter 14, Section “Name the shortcuts: availability and anchoring” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Availability and anchoring” · Remember: a vivid story is not a count, and a starting number is not a fair price, so ask for the base rate and compare prices elsewhere.

• Heuristics and Biases (Tversky & Kahneman) — The Business Psychologist — a six-minute overview of the mental shortcuts described in the 1974 article the chapter names, with sections on anchoring, availability, and confirmation bias set in workplace decisions. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
• What is the Availability Heuristic? (Easy Explanation) — Social Science Explainer — a four-minute explainer on why memorable events such as plane crashes feel more common than they are; compare it with the chapter's traveler who drives after a crash story. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
• CRITICAL THINKING - Cognitive Biases: Anchoring — Wireless Philosophy — a five-minute talk showing how an arbitrary number shown first pulls later estimates toward it, the same pull as the chapter's bike demonstration. The talk quotes figures from the original studies, which the chapter leaves out on purpose; no quiz uses them. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
• Anchoring Bias & Adjustment Heuristic: Definition and Examples — Simply Psychology — a plain explainer of how a first number shapes an estimate, with examples from shop prices and salary talks; read "How the Anchoring Bias Works", the money examples, and "How to Avoid the Anchoring Bias". Use it while working through the Week-14 module overview. (reading, 8–12 min)
• CRITICAL THINKING - Cognitive Biases: Pricing Biases — Wireless Philosophy — a four-minute talk on how a price tag can change what people think a product is worth, a close cousin of the chapter's "was 200 dollars, now 120" tag. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)

③ Check the plan against the record

Chapter 14, Section “Spot motivated reasoning and overconfidence” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Motivated reasoning and overconfidence” · Remember: how sure a plan feels is not evidence, so set it beside the record of how long past projects took.

• The Planning Fallacy: How to Tackle Time Estimates — iluli by Mike Lamb — a five-minute animation on why people expect tasks to take less time than they do, and on two habits, realism and transparency, that make an estimate more honest. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
• Planning Fallacy — The Decision Lab — an explainer on why plans run long and how taking the outside view, the record of similar projects, corrects them; read from the opening through "How to avoid it" and skip the later case studies. Stop here before steelmanning and the ethical frameworks; next week takes those up. (reading, 8–12 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• bias, confirmation — National Institute of Standards and Technology — a one-line glossary entry from a federal standards agency's forensic-science lexicon, defining confirmation bias as seeking and interpreting information to fit what you already expect; read the definition and its note, and skip the rest of the lexicon. (reading, 1–2 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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