DATE: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Feb. 11, 2011.

EVENT: “Skill vs. Luck: Disentangling Success in Complex Systems” is a daylong mix of panels and presentations exploring the degree to which success is attributable to good fortune.

The workshop will examine whether today’s successful individuals and organizations are truly great or have they “serendipitously lit upon strategies or actions that provide temporary advantages?” The extent to which the contributions of skill and luck vary across domains will also be considered.

“Are golfers more dependent on luck than tennis players? Are investment bankers more dependent on skill than venture capitalists? Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak cannot be luck. Or can it?” said Scott Page, director of the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

“We’ll also try to unpack the effects of the increasing complexity and rates of change in the economic, political, social and even biological worlds on the returns to skill. In the modern world, are marginal returns to skill higher, or does the overwhelming complexity leave more to chance?”

The conference will feature Bill Miller, chairman and chief investment officer of Legg Mason Capital Management, and Bob Hamman, the No. 1 player in the World Bridge Federation since 1985. In addition, more than a dozen scholars from Michigan, Harvard, Oxford, North Carolina, Texas Tech and Toronto will participate on the following panels:

• “Skill, Luck, Complexity and Incentives” (9 a.m.)
• “Disentangling Skill vs. Luck in Baseball” (9:45 a.m.)
• “Do Streaks Imply Skill?” (11 a.m.)
• “Skill vs. Luck in Business” (1 p.m.)
• “How Skill Luck Varies Across Contexts” (2:45 p.m.)

PLACE: Michigan Union Anderson Room, 530 S. State St., Ann Arbor.

SPONSOR: U-M Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

Related Links:

• Center for the Study of Complex Systems