Gymnastics judges must guard against “expectation bias”.
For example, being too cautious in scoring routines early in the day. Allowing scores for similar routines to escalate later in the day.
If the best gymnast is first to compete, they should get the highest score. Period.
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Warren & Peter Long sends a link to an interesting study by Jonathan Levav of Stanford and Shai Danziger of Ben-Gurion University.
They found a disturbing pattern to Parole Board decisions in Israel:
… analyzing more than 1,100 decisions over the course of a year. Judges, who would hear the prisoners’ appeals and then get advice from the other members of the board, approved parole in about a third of the cases, but the probability of being paroled fluctuated wildly throughout the day.
Prisoners who appeared early in the morning received parole about 70 percent of the time, while those who appeared late in the day were paroled less than 10 percent of the time. …
read more – NY Times – Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?
The implication for judges is that they would be less likely to give “benefit of the doubt” later in the day.
I don’t see that happening in our world. Our problem is scores unfairly escalating.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 