I guess… it was just a shocking event. We’re not used to someone like him being President.” Here, the student reveals an availability bias in which w… - David Franklin

Dan’s use of two-stage exams kills two birds with one stone. Firstly, he maximises learning by ensuring that the exam itself is a learning experience. Second, in doing so, he makes clear that the grade is less important than the learning. Two-stage exams have not yet ‘taken off’ around the world, and grades remain the key outcome of most exams for most students. Dan, though, has taken advantage of his position in a graduate university environment to push the idea forward.

But everyone who guessed in this way went low, rather than high. It suggests that there is some form of systemic bias in play.

The phrases ‘certainty is an illusion’ and ‘think probabilistically about the world’, both introduced in the first class, are the first two examples of high-level concepts which Dan calls airport ideas.