Well-trained experts in pearl grading have been thought to evaluate pearls according to their glossiness, interference color, and shape. However, the characteristics of their evaluations are not fully understood. Using pearl grading experiments, we investigate the consistency of novice (i.e., without knowledge of pearl grading) and expert participants’ pearl grading skill and then compare the novices’ grading with that of experts; furthermore, we discuss the relationship between grading, interference color, and glossiness. We found that novices’ grading was significantly less concordant with experts average grading than was experts’ grading; more than half of novices graded pearls the opposite of how experts graded those same pearls. However, while experts graded pearls more consistently than novices did, novices’ consistency was relatively high. We also found differences between the groups in regression analyses that used interference color and glossiness as explanatory variables and were conducted for each trial. Although the regression coefficient was significant in 60% of novices’ trials, there were fewer significant trials for the experts (20%). This indicates that novices can also make use of these two factors, but that their usage is simpler than that of the experts. These results suggest that experts and novices share some values about pearls but that the evaluation method is elaborated for experts.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan;Graduate school of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University, Yonezawa, Yamagata, Japan;Electronics Inspired-Interdisciplinary Research Institute, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan
Recommended Citation:
Yusuke Tani,Takehiro Nagai,Kowa Koida,et al. Experts and Novices Use the Same Factors–But Differently–To Evaluate Pearl Quality[J]. PLOS ONE,2014-01-01,9(1)