How Accurate Are Expert Estimations of Correlation?

Authors

Michael Beer, Leibniz University HannoverFollow
Zitong Gong, University of LiverpoolFollow
Francisco Alejandro Diaz De La O, University of LiverpoolFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

6-2017

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-17-53b

Published in Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Engineering Solutions CIES'2017, Honolulu, Hawaii, November 27 - December 1, 2017, pp. 883-891.

Abstract

In many practical situations, it is important to know the correlation between different quantities -- finding correlations helps find the causes of different phenomena, and helps to find way to improve the situation. Often, there is not enough empirical data to experimentally determine all possible correlation. In such cases, a natural idea is to supplement this situation with expert estimates. Expert estimates are rather crude. So, to decide whether to act based on these estimates, it is desirable to know how accurate are expert estimates. In this paper, we propose several techniques for gauging this accuracy.