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The Fold Experiment - Geologists Bias Figure 3. Figure 4. A completed activity sheet. The question about the circle was to see if there was a relationship between the type of fold drawn and the way people drew circles. There was no statistical relationship between the two. Geologists are not like computers So, given that I knew the control group of nongeologists acted pretty much like a random choice, it was time to find out how geologists responded to the same question. The result is illustrated in Figure 5. The pink bell curve shows a very strong antiform bias, and is the result of my 1998 experiment at UWA with 32 geology students and staff using the same activity shown in Figure 3. The statement I heard at that party almost a decade before was thus proven correct with this simple experiment. …because mining M&A is the riskiest and most expensive activity most of us will ever undertake. o MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS o DUE DILLIGENCE Valuation (what you get) Technical reviews Pricing (what you pay) Competitor analysis Transaction data & analysis Devil’s advocate o ANALYSIS o EDUCATION Country and sector reviews Training Endowment profiling Mentoring White papers Peer review WEB: www.alexanderresearch.com.au EMAIL: if@l info@alexanderresearch.com.au Semper Sursum 44 AIG NEWS Issue 123 · February 2016
“ The bell curve indicates that 9 out of 10 geologists, if asked the question of what fold they are imagining, will answer antiform in preference to synform.” In fact, the results between the geologists and non-geologists are so different they can be considered two completely different Figure 5. I haven’t had the opportunity to conduct a similarly large-scale control experiment using a large number of non-geologists.) What I have found from experience is that what ought to be a 0.5 probability outcome, is a 0.9 to 0.95 probability in favour of antiforms The Fold Experiment - Geologists Bias populations. For the larger crowds I have not used the if you ask the fold question of a geologist. The overlap of the probability curves is worksheet from Figure 3, but instead have Several people have told me that they so minimal that we are likely to get a biased asked the participants to imagine a “profile of conducted their own experiments in their work result from geologists, no matter how many a fold.” I then asked them to raise their hand environments and, predictably, the results geologists we ask. if they imagined a synform, and followed with were the same as mine. The bell curve indicates that 9 out of 10 asking for a show of hands if they imagined Try it now on an unsuspecting geologist geologists, if asked the question of what fold an antiform. Figure 6 shows a typical result in colleague who shares your office, or phone a they are imagining, will answer antiform in a classroom setting Figure 6. geologist and ask the question. Repeat this preference to synform. During a 3D modelling course at University ten times and see whether you get the same of Tasmania, 21 MSc geology students 9/10 result that I got every time. Testing on a larger population were asked to participate in the fold test. In his bestselling book The Signal and the These results were so striking that I wanted 10 students did not vote, but out of the Noise, Nate Silver discusses how professional to repeat this experiment at a much larger 11 students that did vote, 11 imagined an gamblers take advantage of the very small gathering of geologists. I finally got around antiform. No one imagined a synform. percentages in their favour to make a living to doing this at two large geoscience conferences more than a decade after my original experiment. The conferences were the 2011 AusIMM Mining Geology conference (Queenstown), and the 2012 AIG Structural Geology and Resources conference (Kalgoorlie). At both conferences, about 300 people were in each of the auditoriums when I asked the fold question. In each case about 15 people put up their hands in favour of synform, while the majority of the crowd favoured antiform, thus providing proof and confidence that the results of my 1998 experiment can be scaled. (Unfortunately AIG NEWS Issue 123 · February 2016 45
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Up & Coming Geoscientists - a sample of our AIG Honours Bursary Recipients

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