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Algorithms could help people make better decisions

By WTOP Staff

UNDATED – In the movie “Moneyball,” baseball teams crunch database numbers to determine which players they should draft.

But what if that formula applied to everything in life?

Economists and psychologists are building toward the notion that databases of real-time analytics can better help people make informed decisions, more than mere intuition or hunches.

Computer systems are getting powerful enough to reduce the biases people have in making decisions.

The Wall Street Journal reports the goal is to create an “objective observer” — based on algorithms — to guide everything from Wall Street investments to technology trends.

To learn more about how algorithms shape the world, watch this YouTube video:

WTOP’s Jason Fraley contributed to this report. Follow WTOP on Twitter.

(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

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