Speed vs Accuracy in Decision Making
Speed vs accuracy tradeoff: fast decisions enable progress but risk errors, slow decisions improve accuracy but miss opportunities.
Contributions
Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.
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A review of the case-study and research sections of this article on speed versus accuracy in decision-making found several issues, including two direct quotations attributed to real named people, Gerald Levin and Kathleen Eisenhardt, that could not be verified as accurate. Since unverified-sounding quotes attributed to real people carry real reputational risk, these were replaced with accurate descriptions or with real, verifiable quotes. Several other statistics were also found to be incorrect or unverifiable.
What the page claimedThe article gave the AOL-Time Warner deal's value as $350 billion, when the real deal value was approximately $165 billion (the $350 billion figure actually described the combined company's total value); attributed a specific quote to Gerald Levin from a '2010 CNN interview' that did not match his real, documented 2010 interview, which was on CNBC and contained different quotes; cited unverifiable claims involving Herbert Allen and a 2001 Harvard Business Review article by Bruce Greenwald; presented an extended direct quote attributed to Kathleen Eisenhardt that could not be verified verbatim, though a real, shorter version of the quote exists; described Roy Baumeister as being at the University of Minnesota, when he was actually at Florida State University; presented the well-known Israeli parole board study and ego depletion research without noting that both have faced significant later academic debate; cited an entirely unverifiable 2019 Wharton and Carnegie Mellon study; attached an unsupported statistic to a real 2013 Steve Blank Harvard Business Review article; and gave incorrect Dropbox signup figures for its early demand-validation video.
What was correctedThe section now gives the AOL-Time Warner deal's real value alongside the combined company's larger total value, describes Gerald Levin's real 2010 interview and its real, verifiable content rather than an unsourced quote, removes the unverifiable Herbert Allen and Greenwald claims, converts the Eisenhardt material into an accurate paraphrase matching her real published wording, corrects Baumeister's affiliation, adds context noting that both the parole board study and ego depletion research have faced later academic debate, removes the unverifiable Wharton and Carnegie Mellon study, describes Blank's real article accurately without the unsupported statistic, and corrects the Dropbox signup figures to the real, well-documented range.
Why: Web searches for each claim found a mix of correct figures attached to the wrong context, real events described with incorrect specifics, and two direct quotations attributed to real people that could not be sourced anywhere. Because inventing or misquoting statements from real, named individuals carries a distinct reputational risk beyond ordinary statistical errors, those quotes were prioritized for correction alongside the other unverifiable details, while preserving the real people, studies, and general arguments involved.
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