Watching young players at volleyball camp, I'm reminded of cognitive biases and mental models.
Let's share one cognitive bias (anchoring) and two mental models (Sample Size and Circle of Competence).
Anchoring cognitive bias is the tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions, which can skew judgment and lead to poor choices.
Example: I see a rising freshman showing reproducible form and solid pace on her serve. As an observer, I could 'anchor' on that tidbit of information in the context of a zero-pressure environment. Perspective should be, "That's something to build upon."
Sample size means that the reliability of judgments depends on the volume of observations. For example, if something "never happened," how likely is it not to happen in the future? Mathematically, it's approximately 3/n where n is the number of observations.
Example: With a tiny sample size of watching young athletes with variable size and physical maturity, judgments are preliminary. Positive but early...
Circle of Competence is one's degree of 'domain expertise'. Time, effort, study, and experience allows us to expand our Circle.
Example: This is my 24th season watching Melrose Volleyball. Expertise is relative, much higher than before but still limited and contextual. Looking through some old blog posts, I saw that in 2010, I likened the roster situation to that of 2004 after the graduation of the four senior starters on the Sectional Champions. It's tempting to drill that well in 2025.
To improve our judgments, learn more about cognitive bias and mental models.
Lagniappe. Here is a recommended article on cognitive biases.
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