| dc.description.abstract | In Spring 2010 I taught—for the first time—an undergraduate required subject in project evaluation (1.011). In the course of that teaching, I wrote and distributed several teaching notes, which were intended to illustrate for the student various systems concepts. The ones included here focused on the theme of uncertainty and how one deals with it.
The first two teaching notes deal with uncertainly in weather prediction and other natural phenomena. The first built on a “snowstorm that never happened” in Boston, as dire forecasts for snow were not indeed realized in February 2010. The paper tries to explain why this kind of thing can happen, given the relationship between storm tracks and amounts of fallen snow at a particular site. The second deals with tsunamis and the state-of-the-art in prediction of tsunamis, which occur as a result of earthquakes. This was motivated by an earthquake that took place in Chile, which many were concerned would lead to tsunamis across the Pacific, with dire effects on islands such as Guam and potentially even Japan. Here big tsunamis were predicted but didn’t occur. Again, we used that example to highlight uncertainties and why errors of this sort were made.
The third and fourth teaching notes deal with professional American football and decision-making under uncertainty. I tried to write these so that one didn’t have to be expert in the rules of football to follow the argument. In November 2009, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, made a quite controversial decision trying to convert a first down on a fourth down play in the last two minutes of a game with the Indianapolis Colts. The Patriots were leading at the time and a successful first down would have allowed the Patriots to retain possession of the ball, guaranteeing a win. His gamble failed; the Patriots did not make the first down and so surrendered the ball, and ultimately lost the game. So the third teaching note tried to explain why Belichick—widely hailed as one of the best coaches in NFL football history—could have made such a “blunder.” The fourth teaching note was a follow up and was concerned with the concept of rationality. Economists use the “rational actor” model to “predict” what people will do when faced with various choices. Often the economists are wrong in their predictions because their definition of rationality may well differ from that of the people actually making the decisions. We illustrate that by considering metrics other than simply maximizing the probability of winning the football game, as in teaching note 3. We included an “embarrassment factor,” which reflects some football coaches concern with appearing foolish when they make a gamble that fails. So they may make an “irrational” decision in the eyes of some, because they are not maximizing their team’s chance to win, but also include in their calculation how embarrassed they might be by their decision, which the coach sees as entirely rational.
These teaching notes would be of interest to the reader who is concerned with teaching uncertainty concepts to undergraduates, and may be of value to those who teach introductory graduate classes as well. Any comments on the substance, content, clarity, and value of the approach would be greatly appreciated. | en_US |
