An Overconfidence Quiz

Matt Hood gave this quiz to a seminar I attended.*

The directions are to state an interval for each question that you are 95% sure contains the right answer. No using reference materials.

1. How many countries are there in the U.N.?
2. How many votes did Obama get in 2008?
3. What year was the Battle of Waterloo?
4. How many protons are in a gold atom?
5. How many runs did the Giants score in the 2010 World Series?
6. What’s the lowest temperature ever recorded in Alaska?
7. What’s the population of Mississippi?
8. How many miles it to the moon (on average)?
9. What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?
10. When did King Tut die?

Matt’s goal with this quiz is to motivate the idea that people are overconfident of what they know, as a lead in to how behavioral finance differs from conventional finance.

I knew the goal of the test was to “trick” me. And, I know how confidence intervals work. And yet the correct answers was only in 3 of the intervals I answered with.

Touché, Matt.

* If you want the answers, e-mail me directly. That way I’m not blabbing Matt’s trade secrets.

Technorati Tags: behavioral,finance,overconfidence,quiz

Comments

[Michael Stack]

I've looked around for your email address and haven't been able to find it. Would you mind sending me the answers? My email address is "mike" followed by a dot, followed by "stack", followed by "gmail" and the dot-com at the end.

Thanks!