The noises in my head

A newish book that is drawing some attention is Noise: A flaw in human judgment, and it's been reviewed in several publications. I heard an interview on NPR with one of the authors, and just those quick teasers are enough to get me to buy a copy for summer reading.

The book's foundation is data gathered over several years involving many different situations where people must make judgments of some sort. A study of 1.5 million court cases, for instance, found that judges issued measurably harsher sentences the day after their local football team lost. In another case, oncologists at one center correctly diagnosed 65 percent of cancers, meaning they misdiagnosed one third of the time. And a study found that one company's insurance adjusters varied up to 55 percent in the premiums they came up with.

Those variations are startling for all of us imagining that justice is blind or that doctors and insurance professionals are, well, professional and basically in agreement on cause and effect.

Those variations are "noise" and noise means we often wonder how life can be so unfair.

There is a lot of noise in education, particularly in assessment and grades, don't you think? One sophomore English class in one large high school should be similar in content and assessment to the sophomore English class being taught down the hall by another teacher. Hah! We don't need a study to doubt that.

I am not immune to some noise in my own grading practices, though it's tough to come up with a number. At some point, after reading a dozen not-so-great essays, for instance, I likely get overly excited by an essay that features an intriguing writing "voice," or simply demonstrates a strong thesis. Multiple grammar errors or some weird logic may be overlooked when it comes time to assign points. 

Could I prove scientifically that Paper A deserves precisely 10 more points than Paper B? Not a chance.

Is it possible that the time of day I read an essay affects my reaction? Almost certainly.

There is no easy fix for noise in many situations, including grading college essays, but studying that noise and how it might be reduced seems like an important step in making life just a bit more fair.