Confidence and Calibration

Objectives

Distinguish confidence from certainty
Keep a high claim off a thin file

Video

The Facts about Fact Checking. Crash Course · Navigating Digital Information #2. Watch on YouTube

Lesson

Confidence is the degree of support for an assessment. High confidence still allows for error.

Calibration is whether that confidence matches the record: strong when the evidence is strong, low when it is thin. Calling a thin file certain is a miss even when the guess happens to land.

Every question in this program asks for your confidence. Your calibration score on Profile is the most honest number the site keeps about you.

Terms

Confidence, Contradiction

Sources

Check

- The degree of support for an assessment
- How many people already agree with it
- Permission to stop checking the evidence
- How loudly and often the claim is stated
- Stop checking, since the question is settled
- Call the conclusion certain and final
- State it, while staying open to revision
- Dismiss evidence that points the other way
- Score the claim by the speaker’s party
- Set confidence to 1.00 so the team will act
- Match the number to how many people shared it
- Match the 0.00–1.00 number to the support