Dunning–Kruger

The most cited effect in psychology, and the chart that cannot support it

A course on the thought of Self-Assessment.

Course outline

1. The Insult — The phrase as it is actually used online, set against what the man who named it says it means — and the two numbers the whole field rests on.
2. Sixty-Five Undergraduates and Thirty Jokes — What the 1999 experiments actually did, what the numbers actually were, and the half of the result that never gets quoted.
3. The Axes — What the famous chart plots against what, why the same quantity appears on both sides, and what happens when the identical procedure is run on numbers that contain nothing at all.
4. Regression Towards Mediocrity — Galton, 1886. Tall parents have sons nearer the average, and for eleven years he thought it was a force in nature. It is the same shape.
5. Three Ways to Make the Effect Out of Nothing — The competing statistical explanations, the objections to the objections, and what actually survives when better methods are used.
6. Reading a Chart Adversarially — The four questions, run on a chart you have not seen before — and what it means that this one survived twenty years.

Part of the Symposium course library.