For the past few years, I have been privileged to work as Jury member for FCBA Awards by Banking Frontiers. This year, Shri. Manoj Agrawal of Banking Frontiers surprised all the Jury members by offering a basket of thought-provoking books and requested the Jury members to pick any one from the basket of books, as token of appreciation. I randomly picked up one book from the basket which was titled as ‘NOISE, A FLAW IN HUMAN JUDGEMENT’. I am giving a brief review on this book.
This book is authored by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein. Noise in ordinary words, we mean a sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant. Incidentally, the word ‘Noise’ is derived from Latin word ‘nausea’ meaning sea-sickness. Scientifically, noise is a sequence of small and rapid variations in pressure that causes the molecules to vibrate. The interaction of vibration molecules sets up a wave motion that transmits the pressure variation away from the vibrating source.
Anyways, any sound that is undesired or interferes with one’s hearing of something is Noise. This noise can have psychological effect, cause stress and impact employee performance. This noise is called as nuisance noise. The cause of nuisance noise are wide ranging and can be quite difficult to control; nevertheless, noise levels below 85 db are not likely to damage hearing.
This book floats a genuinely new idea: whenever there is human judgment, there is noise. In this book, authors Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein show how noise produces errors in many fields, including in medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, forensic science, child protection, creative strategy, performance review and hiring.
Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnosis to identical patients. Or that two judges give different sentences to people to have committed matching crimes. Now imagine that the same doctor or judge makes different decisions depending on whether it is Monday or Wednesday or they haven’t yet had lunch! These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.
We all make bad judgment more than we think. Fact with ground breaking new ideas and drawing on approaches, Noise explains what limits our decision-making and offers a practical root to improve the way we think.
Indeed ‘NOISE, A FLAW IN HUMAN JUDGEMNT’ is a masterpiece book!
Pramod Karnad, Chairman, BoM, Sharad Sahakari Bank, Pune
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