Using rubrics for decision making

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning Professor of Psychology from Princeton University, has written a book titled “Thinking, fast and slow”. In this book there is a chapter called “Intuitions versus Formulas”.  He explains that our evaluation of complex problems can sometimes be standardised by the use of algorithms or formulas with numerical values attached to them.  There are two examples that I wish to quote from that book because I feel it is relevant to how we can use rubrics (or formulas with scores) for standardising the evaluation of student portfolios.

1. How do you evaluate the stability of a marriage?

The formula (frequency of lovemaking – frequency of quarrels) will give a fair idea of marital stability. If the answer is not a negative number, the marriage is probably stable. 

2. How do you evaluate the chances of survival in a new born child?

Obstetricians have always known that infants who do not breathe well within a few minutes of birth are at high risk of brain damage or death. But until the anaesthetist Virginia Apgar wrote a simple algorithm incorporating five variables to observe in all new born infants, with a score assigned to each variable, doctors and midwives used their clinical judgement to determine whether babies were in distress. Some watched for breathing problems while others focused on how soon the baby cried. Without a standardised procedure, danger signs were often missed and many new born infants died. The Apgar scoring system gave everyone a consistent standard for determining risk and helped everyone evaluate this risk in the same way as experienced obstetricians. The Apgar test is credited with helping to reduce infant mortality.