You need to make a vital business decision about your whether or not to sell your company. You have received an offer to sell and have 3 days to decide. You have collected 100 variables and their respective values about your company (balance sheet, financial history, management skills, competition, market expectations, etc. Some may be relevant to your decision and others not, but you don’t know which are or are not. There are only 2 experts in the world you trust: Bob and Mary. Both are world renowned business analysts. You give each expert the 100 variables/value pairs.
Bob says that based on the data you have presented; when your situation has occurred in the past, selling has worked better 80 times out of 100 in his experience. Bob has based his decision using 40 of the 100 variables and their values. The other 60 he has deemed irrelevant or has not had any experience with.
Mary says that based on the data you have presented, when your situation has occurred in the past, no selling has worked better 45 out of 50 times in her experience. Mary based her decision using 70 of the 100 variables and their values. The other 30 she has deemed irrelevant or has not had any experience with.
The experts subset of the 100 variables used in their decision may or may not have some in common.
Each variable has been statistically tested as being significant.
The experts cannot collaborate.
The experts are equally skilled.
You cannot do any more research, collect any more data or consult with any other experts.
The risk of a wrong decision is the same for both options. Mary has been right 90% of the time and Bob 80%. But Bob has more instances on which he based his decision. Mary uses more variables however.
Summary:
Bob (sell) has 80% confidence based on 100 historical cases and used 40 variables
Mary (don’t sell) has 90% confidence based on 50 historical cases and used 70 variables
What do you do and why?