Denkwerkzeuge
12 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- 39 students got the same personality profile. All found it accurate.
In 1949 Bertram Forer gave his 39 students supposedly individual assessments – in fact the identical text, assembled …
- Every decision under uncertainty has four possible outcomes.
Hit, miss, false alarm, correct rejection: signal detection theory, born from 1950s radar research, separates two …
- Explain how a zipper works. In detail.
In 2002 Rozenblit and Keil asked students to rate how well they understood everyday devices, then to explain step by …
- Fewer than 10 percent solve this four-card task.
Four cards show 3, 8, blue and red. Rule: "if a card shows an even number, its other side is blue." Which do you turn? …
- How one question turns rote learning into understanding.
For each new fact ask "why is this true?" and answer it yourself. In 2013 Dunlosky and colleagues rated this technique …
- How to find out that your estimates are too narrow.
Don't estimate a value, estimate a range you're 90 percent sure contains the truth. If you were calibrated, the answer …
- Meet a stranger in New York, no messages allowed. Where?
Thomas Schelling posed this in 1960 in The Strategy of Conflict. Most of his students said noon at Grand Central …
- Nothing special happens at full moon. You just remember it.
In 1985 Rotton and Kelly pooled 37 studies on lunar phase and behaviour and found no link; of 23 studies claiming one …
- Shoot first, then paint the target around the holes.
The fallacy arises when you search data for patterns and only then form the hypothesis. A 1993 Swedish study tested …
- Two conditions can never be likelier than one.
Linda is 31, outspoken, studied philosophy and joined anti-nuclear protests. Is she more likely a bank teller, or a …
- Two gears in your head: one fast, one expensive.
System 1 answers instantly, effortlessly and emotionally; System 2 works slowly, deliberately and costs attention. The …
- Why the simplest strategy won a tournament full of tricks.
In the prisoner's dilemma betrayal pays in one round, but mutual cooperation pays both more over time. Robert Axelrod …