Professor Olivier Sibony on Noise

Why might judges in the same Court give vastly different sentences for the same crime? The answer is noise. When experts who assess the same situation come to very different conclusions for no good reason, we risk bad outcomes.

On this episode, I’m speaking with Professor Olivier Sibony, who is the co-author — along with Professors Daniel Kahneman and Cass Sunstein — of Noise: a flaw in human judgement.

In our discussion, he explains what noise is, why it matters and what we can do to mitigate it.
He also shares how this stellar line-up of authors came together.

Olivier also helps me understand why a commonly adopted approach of using forced distribution for employee performance evaluations, which I have always found to be a bad idea, is…a really bad idea!

Olivier has been on the show before. You’ll find that episode here: https://www.podpage.com/the-human-risk-podcast/professor-olivier-sibony-on-mistakes/

To find out more about Olivier, his research and his previous book ‘You’re About To Make A Terrible Mistake’ visit his website: https://oliviersibony.com/about/

For more on Noise, the book see: https://oliviersibony.com/books/noise/

To read a 2016 article on Noise by Daniel Kahneman: https://hbr.org/2016/10/noise