Book Reading #7: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan
Random House Digital, Inc

Chapter 0: Introduction: Why do we Make Mistakes?

The short answer is, because there is all kinds of mistakes to make. In fact we have more different kinds of mistakes that one might think of, in fact there are a lot of different kinds of mistakes that people never really ever consider. People make them everyday and in some cases these simple mistakes could have huge consequences. Even something as simple as forgetting a password can be a rather dangerous mistake but the fact that the password is protected is some good so we need to learn to accept both. Probably the biggest factor we need to remember is that when we learn something we need to be in the same state that we were in when we learned it. They even refer to the famous e=MCHammered experiment where drunk people were taught facts and then asked to recall them and only could while intoxicated.


This chapter was good for an introductory chapter. It made me think and had a few really good examples. Probably the best thing it did was give a really good account of what kinds of things the book is going to cover and entice the reader to keep going. I linked the examples especially about how fast people forget their passwords and how we have to remember too many things sometimes. It makes me wonder if there is a good way to just have one number for your whole life and easier to remember. Maybe not but it still stands that despite us making mistakes we don't exactly live a world where it is easy to NOT make them, again about how there is too many different kinds.

Chapter 1: We Look but Don't Always See

This chapter we are introduced to the many different kinds of mistakes and how they occur. There is clearly a number of different mistakes someone can make and we are introduced to a few and given an example. The author even gives a famous case of some researchers who asked a group of student to identify a few characteristics of the penny and tracked to see how many of them could remember details about it. Interestingly enough most people couldn't even remember three facts about the penny. Further he talks about how medical lab workers and people who work x-ray security at the airport commonly miss things. It is really rather scary to think about this and if these are missed enough there is going to be a problem. Despite this we are coming up with more ways to avoid error and need to be careful and understand what kinds of errors are common for what we are trying to do.

I think I have made a mistake in this blog as I can no longer see the bar that represents where I am at in my typing. While this is most likely not my fault it is still a mistake that was made and there was literally nothing I could do to prevent it. I am sure there is a simple fix but for some of these ideas that are being expressed there is not really anything that can be done and that is the inherent problem. Maybe we will eventually start designing items with the idea of mistake-proof or idiot-proof in mind but human error is as we've learned 90% of all mistakes so that is a hard task to tackle. I hope that eventually people will learn from their mistakes but that too might be a waste of a wish.

Chapter 2: We all Search for Meaning

In this chapter we are shown how memory works and get a few examples of how people remember certain things but not others. In fact it is a phenomena they author talks about seeing how many people remember features of pennies and what they remember about peoples names and faces. There are even a few tips given as how to remember a face or a name better and how these have been used historically to help identify criminals and other forms of identification. The biggest thing covered is the idea of the TOT or tip of tongue slip where the person replaces one familiarity with another. The example given of crossing Albert Einstein and Joe Thiesman.

This chapter to me was surprising but altogether rather intuitive. It makes sense that any memory can only contain so many things and the remembering certain information is nothing more than techniques and tricks to remember things. I did enjoy the examples of how people cant recognize pennies and cross names of people with similar traits or occupations. The story about the lady and the criminal really kind of made me sad and I could have done without it. Despite this these observations and studies were rather interesting and I didn't hate this chapter.

Chapter 3: We Connect the Dots

In this chapter we find out about how people connect the dots in certain situations. In fact many times people only forget things because they are unable to make a connection to the even or fact they wish to remember. We all know that some mistakes are more memorable than others but we might not all know that there is situations where changing your mind might be the best thing for you. In fact more people would do better on tests if they would change their answers. We also get to learn about how color counts in advertising and how color can change someones perception of an event or time. I think the most interesting part of this chapter was that even just a photo can contribute to the victory or loss of a political pundit and people draw these connections based on the smallest things.

I liked this chapter a lot, the ways that people connect certain features with good and bad or serious and not serious are rather interesting. It was neat to see how the smallest thing could skew ones judgment and then adjust their viewpoint all together. The part that really freaked me out is that somehow men can 'sense' when a topless dancer is in the period of reproduction and subsequently give them more money. It as if they can sense the pheromones that women give off and want to make them their mate and support them more. I think that this chapter was really interesting and I wanted to find more examples of these kinds of dot connecting exercises.

Chapter 4: We Wear Rose Colored Glasses

In this chapter we are introduced to the idea that people only see what they want to see, and when they do they tend to see things that they want to see better. They talked a lot about how when someone does something wrong their view of what they did changes based on how they feel about the person and what side they want to take. They also showed experiments where people were able to pick a picture of themselves out of a group that was more beautiful than they actually are. This even is extended to picking people out of a lineup as they pick the person who looks like that might have been the closest because of the fit of the person or what they do. Essentially that we see things as if we are looking at flowers and we want what we see to fit the situation.

I have read about this phenomena before and I think it is rather interesting. I also think it is inherently obvious that yes of course people are going to see what they want to see more so than anything else. Essentially this is like the idea of quitting threshold, you can hide an elephant as long as you tell people to look for something that's not an elephant. Some people will look so hard that unless they have some kind of special fervor for elephants or an affinity to large gray creatures then they will not remember. I could branch this over and say that you could hide a dancing bear in the same way. This was a fun chapter none the less and the examples were great.

Chapter 5: We Can Walk and Chew Bubble Gum, but Not Much Else

In this chapter we look at the idea that people can multitask just not that well. It is essentially the idea that when people multitask they might be able to do it but the quality to which they can do each activity suffers. It is the idea that in order to do more than one thing we need to focus on both and trying to do both makes both suffer. They look at examples involved with texting and driving and even nearly scorn Microsoft for trying to make things to use in the car while driving. They even show examples of how age, gender, religion and experience can affect multi-tasking skills and how people differ in their abilities to do these.

I do agree with this chapter, people really cant multitask well and when they try to it just leads to poor results. I also am amazed of the number of things that are made for the car to make driving more interesting. To me driving isn't supposed to be inherently interesting it is just something that needs to happen. I also think it is a good idea to cut down on distractions in the car as while people may be bored they are paying more attention to the road and what is going on. Some people tell me that this can then lead to sleepyness but that is entirely a different blog post.

Chapters 6: We are in the Wrong Frame of Mind

In this chapter we find out about how people frame different items and what this causes to happen. When people look at things in a certain light and how they frame different settings. Essentially it is the idea that when people see things in a certain way they tend to be able to block out other information and this can cause them to make mistakes. The examples given were similar to framing issues discussed in earlier literature of the class and there was discussion of why people do them. One of the best examples are at the supermarket when they try to sell things in groups of 4 instead of 1 or they say there is a limit on the number of items you are allowed to buy at a certain time. Simply because people think about these ideas they tend to subconsciously do them.

I think one of my favorite examples of this is to tell people to say the word silk three times and then ask them what cows drink. It is because they get into the frame of mind of thinking about silk and then choose words that associate with them. I think it is rather inherently interesting that humans try to group things into parts rather than simply thinking of ideas as stand alone units. I believe that a lot of this has to do with how memory works and how people store thoughts but traditional psychology has only proven this to some extent.


Chapter 7: We Skim

In these chapters we find out about how people make a different kind of mistake simply by grazing over a section of information rather than actually paying attention to it. This is known as skimming and leads to many kinds of mistakes with people. Essentially people who dont entirely understand something simply glance over it and accept it for what it is. The best example is when a music student plays music as it is and the instructor finds a printed mistake in all of them. We also are able to see that when people do something more than once the first time they simply skim and usually the second time they remember it better. It is simply a process of memory conversion and paying attention.

I think this chapter was also interesting and really had more to do with listening and paying attention more so than skimming. I want to do experiments all the time and see if I can improve my memory simply by trying to do tricks and see if I could do better the first time I look at a set of information. Even as I sit here now I am having to refer back to the book because I skimmed this chapter more than anything. I normally do fine with picking it up but I still need to look at things in the morning to remind myself of what I read the night before. I simply just want to focus more but sometimes I just get distracted. Like I am while I am writing this. The point is the chapter does have really good examples but in general is was things I had read before.

Chapter 8: We Like Things Tidy


In this chapter we see examples of how people like things organized rather than disorganized. There is a tendency for people to be able to not see something very obvious when there is a level of chaos or distraction to something. We tend to lump things together into categories to try to remember what they are and when we go back later to try to make sense of it we only retain the information if the information was organized in a logical way. We tend to want to try to keep the world in order and some experiments are shown of people wanting to organize items into groups and the processes they use to try and do this.

This chapter didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It seemed rather slow and the examples didn't seem to make much sense as to what they were trying to study. I know there is a propensity of people to try and clean things or make them in a viewable manner but I don't see how running experiments is going to try and quantify that data or make it into a form that is presentable in a way that people don't already know. The chapter had good information just seemed a little, ironically, muddled.

Chapter 9: Men Shoot First


This chapter talks about how men are more trigger happy than women at taking a chance and more willing to shoot first. They even talk about why the military was originally all male because men have more of a propensity to shoot now and ask later. They even frame this in the context of making decisions where men are more likely to go with their gut and make a decision. Women tend to look at the big picture and will generally not take an opportunity when one presents itself. It was not a commentary on which was better just an observation on the fact that men will jump at an opportunity much faster than women and the differences of the thinking between the two.

This chapter I really liked because it is very true in what it is saying. While I don't know if there is a way to determine if men always will fire guns faster than women I do think it is true that they jump when there is a window without looking. It seems like every time an opportunity comes up that favors me I find myself going for it and when I ask female friends about it they disagree with my decision saying I should have gotten more information about it first. I don't know if they are saying that men are more risk takers than women are but there definitely seems to be pattern that men will shoot first and women will try to analyze the situation more.

Chapter 10: We All Think We're Above Average

In this chapter we are introduced to the idea that people make mistakes simply because they think they are better at doing a task then they really are. It is this idea that everyone will believe that they are above average at any given task when they likely have no experience or have any idea how well they would do at a task. They looked at experts and why they are better than the average person and even ran tests that showed when the task was harder that people predicted that they would do even better. They also talk about examples where this isn't entirely our fault, it is partially based on lack of feedback.

I think this is a universal truth, people will always believe they are above average at any given task. Unless the person has had some  kind of experience with the topic they will blindly believe that they are in the top of something. In fact it is true that depressed people will actually be more accurate in their predictions of how well they will do in something. Again this is not entirely our fault we should also realize that there is things that can be done to improve design of some things, but in general with predictions there is not a whole lot we can do.

Chapter 11: We'd Rather Wing it:

In this chapter we learn about how people despite the fact that they have no experience at a task would rather try and learn how to do something than go through the process of understanding the task. We look at people who are experts at different tasks and in different fields and realize that they are only that way because they practice a lot every day. Most people however simply want to just be able to do something well enough to get by so that it looks like they understand and this can cause a lot of mistakes to be made.

I think it is true that people in general hate planning and for the most part people are unable to understand a task before they do it. Even in college we want to be able to completely understand how to do a homework before we do it but if we were to do this then we wouldn't have time for much else such as eating or sleeping. Even right now I don't entirely understand all of this chapter but I can wing my understanding well enough to get past this blog and the quiz.

Chapter 12: We Don't Constrain Ourselves

This chapter tells us about how we make mistakes simply because we are unable to constrain the design choices we make. We have too many choices to make in any given scenario and if we were simply to place a few constraints on these there would be a lot less mistakes. In fact we see a lot of examples of how there are numberous different options on many different decides and that causes a lot of mistakes to be needed. If we were to constrain these so that they could only be used one way then it would work a lot better.

I think this information has been presented to us before but in different ways. We know that the best example of this is to look at legos because there is only a few ways they can be put together at any given time so it puts a large constraint that helps us to know how to use them .We also got to see a bit about affordances which are a huge deal in computer science. We know these are essentially different constraints placed on items that let us know how they are used, if an item has enough affordances then we know how to use it instinctively.

Chapter 13: The Grass Does Look Greener

This lets us know that there is always something that looks better, more shiny and newer than what we have. However, shiny things are a bit part of what causes us to make mistakes. We follow the story of a young couple who moves to Hollywood to be more of a part of modern life and be close to the beach and in nice warm weather. However, once they have a child this changes and they start pining for their old home town where everything was a little bit simpler and people were not as stuck up. While it may seem that the good life makes things better it is also know that people are not always happy just because they live in California.

I know things look glamorous and people always think that they are going to get a better life and time when they move to a new place or try something new, however it is not always the case. We tell people that the south things are simpler and its because it is, most activities in the south are a bit simpler because we are very hands off. We think that people should be able to do their own thing and if people are into something that is OK. We don't expect people to do things and we don't have crazy things to make people do to be accepted.