despite our best efforts humans are
innately poor decision makers we tend to
go with our gut sometimes we get lucky
oftentimes we don't the truth is we are
naturally wired to avoid risk
it's just baked into our DNA for the
earliest humans making assumptions about
the world around them and trying to
avoid danger was a matter of life and
death today the world has changed
exponentially but our inherent wiring
hasn't in fact psychologists have seen
that humans experienced a large number
of cognitive biases that affect our
ability to navigate the complicated
world around us we still have a
tremendous tendency toward risk aversion
focusing on the pain of potential losses
far more than the benefits of potential
gains NFL coaches for example often
choose to kick a field goal rather than
the riskier option of trying for a
fourth down conversion
even though statistically the benefits
of going for it could greatly increase
their chances of winning the game
sometimes our inflated confidence
impairs our judgment studies have shown
that misspellings are a common example
of overconfidence confirmation bias is
the tendency to interpret information in
a way that confirms our existing beliefs
or hypotheses anchoring is another bias
that occurs when individuals lock on to
an initial piece of information to make
subsequent judgments finding a great
deal can be very motivating until
there's additional information to
consider so in today's world of highly
accessible information how can we limit
the pitfalls of human biases the answer
is science sound scientific methodology
in combination with modern computing
power can reduce the limitations of
conventional wisdom and bring forth
extraordinary results like in 1997 when
deep blue famously outplayed world chess
champion Garry Kasparov to
everyone has that same computing power
and data access in the palm of their
hand now that's a game-changer think
about it if you can design models to
analyze and understand the pools of data
and variables in your business decisions
with a clearly defined and measurable
objective your chances of making better
more impactful decisions are
considerably higher when we recognize
our biases perhaps humans aren't such
poor decision makers after all we just
need a little help from science and
technology let your data speak and find
your edge