What useful heuristics you use for quickly estimating probabilities do you use?
Mine is: try to actively think about picking the probability such that if you would be impartial between taking either side of the bet.
This is (tautologically) the correct approach but I am often estimating probabilities in an “adversarial” context (i.e. informally with friends where we both have fairly different models). In this context you’re incentivised to negotiate the best possible odds for yourself, even if you aren’t actively trying to do this.
Rather than estimating the actual probability, I found my brain was estimating “what odds would I be happy to place a bet on” which ends up estimating lower odds for the side you expect to bet on.
(Obviously, the best tip is “practice” and “keep a record of your predictions and examine them”.)
I think a lot about dice and cards, especially because I have the most trouble with probabilities that are <5 percent.
‘Number of consecutive perfect draws’ in magic is very useful for me. Eg ‘x consecutive one of one draws‘ in a draft is 1/~(20-30)^x. Imprecise, but gives me any handle at all for pretty slim odds.
Similarly, dice rolls. # of consecutive critical successes, or # of critical successes among n attempts, or ‘critical success * rolling n on an additional n sided die’.
I’ve played a lot of dice-heavy games and used dice to help resolve indecision since I was ~11, but have only started taking putting non-bullshit probabilities on things as a serious skill very recently (maybe a year).
What useful heuristics you use for quickly estimating probabilities do you use?
Mine is: try to actively think about picking the probability such that if you would be impartial between taking either side of the bet.
This is (tautologically) the correct approach but I am often estimating probabilities in an “adversarial” context (i.e. informally with friends where we both have fairly different models). In this context you’re incentivised to negotiate the best possible odds for yourself, even if you aren’t actively trying to do this.
Rather than estimating the actual probability, I found my brain was estimating “what odds would I be happy to place a bet on” which ends up estimating lower odds for the side you expect to bet on.
(Obviously, the best tip is “practice” and “keep a record of your predictions and examine them”.)
I think a lot about dice and cards, especially because I have the most trouble with probabilities that are <5 percent.
‘Number of consecutive perfect draws’ in magic is very useful for me. Eg ‘x consecutive one of one draws‘ in a draft is 1/~(20-30)^x. Imprecise, but gives me any handle at all for pretty slim odds.
Similarly, dice rolls. # of consecutive critical successes, or # of critical successes among n attempts, or ‘critical success * rolling n on an additional n sided die’.
I’ve played a lot of dice-heavy games and used dice to help resolve indecision since I was ~11, but have only started taking putting non-bullshit probabilities on things as a serious skill very recently (maybe a year).