Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
In Risk Savvy Gerd Gigerenzer argues that better risk literacy could reduce emotional stress. To emphasize this point, Gigerenzer writes about parents who receive false positive medical test results for infant babies. Their children had been screened for biochemical disorders, and the tests indicated that the child had a disorder. However, upon follow-up screenings and … Continue reading Risk Literacy and Emotional Stress
In a graduate course on healthcare economics a professor of mine had us think about drug testing student athletes. We ran through a few scenarios where we calculated how many true positive test results and how many false positive test results we should expect if we oversaw a university program to drug tests student athletes … Continue reading Understanding False Positives with Natural Frequencies
My last post was all about satisficing, making decisions based on alternatives that satisfy our wants and needs and that are good enough, but may not be the absolute best option. Satisficing contrasts the idea of maximizing. When we maximize, we find the best alternative from which no additional Pareto efficiencies can be gained. Maximizing … Continue reading Aspiration Rules
Satisficing gets a bad wrap, but it isn't actually that bad of a way to make decisions and it realistically accommodates the constraints and challenges that decision-makers in the real world face. None of us would like admit when we are satisficing, but the reality is that we are happy to satisfice all the time, … Continue reading Satisficing
I find personality trait tests misleading. I know they are used by companies in hiring decisions and I know that Big 5 Personality Traits have been shown to predict political party support, but I still feel that they are misapplied and misunderstood. Specifically, I think that the way we interpret them fails to take context … Continue reading A Leadership Personality
In the book Risk Savvy Gerd Gigerenzer describes the work of top executives within companies as being inherently intuitive. Executives and managers within high performing companies are constantly pressed for time. There are more decisions, more incoming items that need attention, and more things to work on than any executive or manager can adequately handle … Continue reading A Leader’s Toolbox
"Although about half of professional decisions in large companies are gut decisions, it would probably not go over well if a manager publicly admitted, I had a hunch. In our society, intuition is suspicious. For that reason, managers typically hide their intuitions or have even stopped listening to them," Gerd Gigerenzer writes in Risk Savvy. … Continue reading Gut Decisions
When making predictions or decisions in the real world where there are many variables, high levels of uncertainty, and numerous alternative options to chose from, using a simple rule of thumb can be better than developing complex models for predictions. The intuitive sense is that the more complex our model the more accurately it will … Continue reading A Bias Toward Complexity
One of the downfalls of a negative error cultures is that people become defensive over any mistake they make. Errors and mistakes are shamed and people who commit errors do their best to hide them or deflect responsibility. Within negative error cultures you are more likely to see people taking steps to distance themselves from … Continue reading Defensive Decision-Making
Autonomy, free will, and self-control combine to create a useful myth. The myth is that we control our own destinies, that we are autonomous actors with rights, freedoms, and the opportunity to improve our lives through our own effort. The reality is that the world is incredibly complex, that we don't get to chose our … Continue reading A Useful Myth