Download or read book Reducing Uncertainty written by Thomas Fingar and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes what Intelligence Community (IC) analysts do, how they do it, and how they are affected by the political context that shapes, uses, and sometimes abuses their output. It is written by a 25-year intelligence professional.

Download or read book Investment under Uncertainty written by Robert K. Dixit and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-14 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should firms decide whether and when to invest in new capital equipment, additions to their workforce, or the development of new products? Why have traditional economic models of investment failed to explain the behavior of investment spending in the United States and other countries? In this book, Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck provide the first detailed exposition of a new theoretical approach to the capital investment decisions of firms, stressing the irreversibility of most investment decisions, and the ongoing uncertainty of the economic environment in which these decisions are made. In so doing, they answer important questions about investment decisions and the behavior of investment spending. This new approach to investment recognizes the option value of waiting for better (but never complete) information. It exploits an analogy with the theory of options in financial markets, which permits a much richer dynamic framework than was possible with the traditional theory of investment. The authors present the new theory in a clear and systematic way, and consolidate, synthesize, and extend the various strands of research that have come out of the theory. Their book shows the importance of the theory for understanding investment behavior of firms; develops the implications of this theory for industry dynamics and for government policy concerning investment; and shows how the theory can be applied to specific industries and to a wide variety of business problems.

Download or read book Uncertainty in Games written by Greg Costikyan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How uncertainty in games -- from Super Mario Bros. to Rock/Paper/Scissors -- engages players and shapes play experiences.

Download or read book Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty written by Vincent A. W. J. Marchau and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book focuses on both the theory and practice associated with the tools and approaches for decisionmaking in the face of deep uncertainty. It explores approaches and tools supporting the design of strategic plans under deep uncertainty, and their testing in the real world, including barriers and enablers for their use in practice. The book broadens traditional approaches and tools to include the analysis of actors and networks related to the problem at hand. It also shows how lessons learned in the application process can be used to improve the approaches and tools used in the design process. The book offers guidance in identifying and applying appropriate approaches and tools to design plans, as well as advice on implementing these plans in the real world. For decisionmakers and practitioners, the book includes realistic examples and practical guidelines that should help them understand what decisionmaking under deep uncertainty is and how it may be of assistance to them. Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty: From Theory to Practice is divided into four parts. Part I presents five approaches for designing strategic plans under deep uncertainty: Robust Decision Making, Dynamic Adaptive Planning, Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways, Info-Gap Decision Theory, and Engineering Options Analysis. Each approach is worked out in terms of its theoretical foundations, methodological steps to follow when using the approach, latest methodological insights, and challenges for improvement. In Part II, applications of each of these approaches are presented. Based on recent case studies, the practical implications of applying each approach are discussed in depth. Part III focuses on using the approaches and tools in real-world contexts, based on insights from real-world cases. Part IV contains conclusions and a synthesis of the lessons that can be drawn for designing, applying, and implementing strategic plans under deep uncertainty, as well as recommendations for future work. The publication of this book has been funded by the Radboud University, the RAND Corporation, Delft University of Technology, and Deltares.

Download or read book Rethinking Readiness written by Jeff Schlegelmilch and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As human society continues to develop, we have increased the risk of large-scale disasters. From health care to infrastructure to national security, systems designed to keep us safe have also heightened the potential for catastrophe. The constant pressure of climate change, geopolitical conflict, and our tendency to ignore what is hard to grasp exacerbates potential dangers. How can we prepare for and prevent the twenty-first-century disasters on the horizon? Rethinking Readiness offers an expert introduction to human-made threats and vulnerabilities, with a focus on opportunities to reimagine how we approach disaster preparedness. Jeff Schlegelmilch identifies and explores the most critical threats facing the world today, detailing the dangers of pandemics, climate change, infrastructure collapse, cyberattacks, and nuclear conflict. Drawing on the latest research from leading experts, he provides an accessible overview of the causes and potential effects of these looming megadisasters. The book highlights the potential for building resilient, adaptable, and sustainable systems so that we can be better prepared to respond to and recover from future crises. Thoroughly grounded in scientific and policy expertise, Rethinking Readiness is an essential guide to this century’s biggest challenges in disaster management.

Download or read book Anticipating Uncertainty written by Chao Gao and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Straddles on individual stocks generally earn significantly negative returns. However, average at the money straddles from three days before an earnings announcement to the announcement date yield a highly significant 3.34% return. The positive returns on straddles indicate that investors under-estimate the magnitude of uncertainty around earnings announcements. We find positive straddle returns are more pronounced for smaller firms, firms with higher volatility, higher kurtosis, more volatile past earnings surprises and less trading volume/higher transaction costs. This suggests that when firm signals are noisy, and/or when it is costlier to trade, investors underestimate the uncertainty associated with earnings announcements.

Download or read book An Uncertain Future Anticipating Oil in Uganda written by Annika Witte and published by Göttingen University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discovery of oil in Uganda in 2006 ushered in an oil-age era with new prospects of unforeseen riches. However, after an initial exploration boom developments stalled. Unlike other countries with major oil discoveries, Uganda has been slow in developing its oil. In fact, over ten years after the first discoveries, there is still no oil. During the time of the research for this book between 2012 and 2015, Uganda’s oil had not yet fully materialised but was becoming. The overarching characteristic of this research project was waiting for the big changes to come: a waiting characterised by indeterminacy. There is a timeline but every year it gets expanded and in 2018 having oil still seems to belong to an uncertain future. This book looks at the waiting period as a time of not-yet-ness and describes the practices of future- and resource-making in Uganda. How did Ugandans handle the new resource wealth and how did they imagine their future with oil to be? This ethnography is concerned with Uganda’s oil and the way Ugandans anticipated different futures with it: promising futures of wealth and development and disturbing futures of destruction and suffering. The book works out how uncertainty was an underlying feature of these anticipations and how risks and risk discourses shaped the imaginations of possible futures. Much of the talk around the oil involved the dichotomy of blessing or curse and it was not clear, which one the oil would be. Rather than adding another assessment of what the future with oil will be like, this book describes the predictions and prophesies as an essential part of how resources are being made. This ethnography shows how various actors in Uganda, from the state, the oil industry, the civil society, and the extractive communities, have tried to negotiate their position in the oil arena. Annika Witte argues in this book that by establishing their risks and using them as power resources actors can influence the becoming of oil as a resource and their own place in a petro-future. The book offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of Uganda’s oil and the negotiations that took place in an oil state to be.

Download or read book Managing Project Uncertainty written by David Cleden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dealing effectively with uncertainty requires today's project manager to be familiar with a broad spectrum of strategies, encompassing both 'hard' and 'soft' methods. This theme of unified thinking (i.e. the need to selectively draw upon a wide range of strategies in any given situation) will differentiate the book from its contemporaries. By picking up where traditional risk management techniques begin to fail, it brings together leading-edge thinking from a variety of disciplines and shows how these techniques can be used to conquer uncertainty in projects. The ability to make good decisions when faced with uncertainty is the real challenge. It is a universal truth that a decision is only as good as the information it is based on. But good information is often hard to come by, and all projects are vulnerable to the unknown and the unknowable. Thus, uncertainty becomes the sworn enemy of the project manager. Wherever we try to analyse, quantify, plan and act, uncertainty lies in wait to surprise us with its ambiguity and unpredictability. It lurks in every stage of the project lifecycle: in the planning (how long will this really take?), the initiation (this isn't the situation I expected!), the execution (who could have foreseen that happening?), and even the completion of a project (where are the expected benefits?). But managing uncertainty is a lot more than just applying risk management techniques. It requires a deep appreciation of how uncertainty arises and, by recognising its different guises, the appropriate strategies can be formulated. If we can learn how to reduce uncertainty, we can make better management decisions and increase the chances of the project succeeding. This book addresses five key questions: ¢ Why is there uncertainty in projects? ¢ How do you spot the symptoms of uncertainty, preferably at an early stage? ¢ What can be done to avoid uncertainty? ¢ What strategies can be used to deal with project uncertainty? ¢ How can both the individual and the organisation learn to cope more effectively in the future? The reader is assumed to be a either a project management professional, or a senior manager looking for ways to improve project management strategy within their organisation. As such, a foundation in project management basics is assumed, although not essential. The book then builds on this by exposing new ideas and concepts, and shows how these can be harnessed to tackle uncertainty in its many guises.

Download or read book Managing Uncertainty written by Michel Syrett and published by The Economist. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Managing uncertainty has become a new business imperative. Technological discontinuities, regulatory upheavals, geopolitical shocks, abrupt shifts in consumer tastes or behavior, and many other factors have emerged or intensified in recent years and together conspire to undermine even the most carefully constructed business strategies. Managing Uncertainty: Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Turbulent Times addresses these new challenges, assessing the sources of business turbulence, how to classify uncertainty, and the different ways in which uncertainty can be embraced to allow greater innovation and growth. Drawing on examples from around the world, the book presents the most recent ideas on what it means to manage uncertainty, from practitioners, academics, and consultants. Addresses the challenges of managing uncertainty in business Presents a step-by-step guide to managing business uncertainty Draws examples from major international companies, including Intel, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Boeing, Quinetiq, Philips, China Telecom, Ford, Apple, Shell, Glaxo SmithKline and many more Written for business leaders and managers looking for new ways to ensure that their businesses continue to thrive in a world of increasing complexity, Managing Uncertainty presents new and innovative ideas about reducing risk by understanding difficult-to-predict shifts.

Download or read book Masters of Uncertainty written by Phaedra Daipha and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Masters of Uncertainty, Phaedra Daipha offers a new framework for understanding decision-making practice after spending years immersed in a northeastern office of the National Weather Service. Arguing that forecasters have made a virtue of the unpredictability of the weather, Daipha shows how they enlist an onmivorous appetite for information and improvisational collage techniques to create a locally meaningful forecast on their computer screens. This richly detailed and lucidly written book advances a theory of decision making that foregrounds the pragmatic and situated nature of expert cognition and casts new light on how we make decisions in the digital age"--Page {4] of cover.

Download or read book Risk Uncertainty and Profit written by Frank H. Knight and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

Download or read book Uncertainty and Information written by George J. Klir and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-11-22 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deal with information and uncertainty properly and efficientlyusing tools emerging from generalized information theory Uncertainty and Information: Foundations of Generalized InformationTheory contains comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of resultsthat have emerged from a research program begun by the author inthe early 1990s under the name "generalized information theory"(GIT). This ongoing research program aims to develop a formalmathematical treatment of the interrelated concepts of uncertaintyand information in all their varieties. In GIT, as in classicalinformation theory, uncertainty (predictive, retrodictive,diagnostic, prescriptive, and the like) is viewed as amanifestation of information deficiency, while information isviewed as anything capable of reducing the uncertainty. A broadconceptual framework for GIT is obtained by expanding theformalized language of classical set theory to include moreexpressive formalized languages based on fuzzy sets of varioustypes, and by expanding classical theory of additive measures toinclude more expressive non-additive measures of varioustypes. This landmark book examines each of several theories for dealingwith particular types of uncertainty at the following fourlevels: * Mathematical formalization of the conceived type ofuncertainty * Calculus for manipulating this particular type ofuncertainty * Justifiable ways of measuring the amount of uncertainty in anysituation formalizable in the theory * Methodological aspects of the theory With extensive use of examples and illustrations to clarify complexmaterial and demonstrate practical applications, generoushistorical and bibliographical notes, end-of-chapter exercises totest readers' newfound knowledge, glossaries, and an Instructor'sManual, this is an excellent graduate-level textbook, as well as anoutstanding reference for researchers and practitioners who dealwith the various problems involving uncertainty and information. AnInstructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all theproblems in the book is available from the Wiley editorialdepartment.

Download or read book The Cunning of Uncertainty written by Helga Nowotny and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make predictions to try to clear the mists and predict ahead. But the future is inherently uncertain - and the mist that shrouds our path an inherent part of our journey. The burning question is whether our societies can face up to uncertainty, learn to embrace it and whether we can open up to a constantly evolving future. In this new book, Helga Nowotny shows how research can thrive at the cusp of uncertainty. Science, she argues, can eventually transform uncertainty into certainty, but into certainty which remains always provisional. Uncertainty is never completely static. It is constantly evolving. It encompasses geological time scales and, at the level of human experience, split-second changes as cells divide. Life and death decisions are taken in the blink of the eye, while human interactions with the natural environment may reveal their impact over millennia. Uncertainty is cunning. It appears at unexpected moments, it shuns the straight line, takes the oblique route and sometimes the unexpected short-cut. As we acknowledge the cunning of uncertainty, its threats retreat. We accept that any scientific inquiry must produce results that are provisional and uncertain. This message is vital for politicians and policy-makers: do not be tempted by small, short-term, controllable gains to the exclusion of uncertain, high-gain opportunities. Wide-ranging in its use of examples and enriched by the author’s experience as President of the European Research Council, one of the world’s leading funding organisations for fundamental research. The Cunning of Uncertainty is a must-read for students and scholars of all disciplines, politicians, policy-makers and anyone concerned with the fundamental role of knowledge and science in our societies today.

Download or read book Handling Uncertainty written by Mike Briggs and published by IChemE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acting as a wide-ranging guide for young professionals and a source of reference for managers, this title deals with the subject of uncertainty in the process industries and related fields, in a practical and positive way. It demonstrates how to recognize key features and handle different situations effectively, illustrating the principles for effective action with examples from the author's experience in the process industries.

Download or read book Mastering Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering written by Peter F. Pelz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book reports on innovative methods, technologies and strategies for mastering uncertainty in technical systems. Despite the fact that current research on uncertainty is mainly focusing on uncertainty quantification and analysis, this book gives emphasis to innovative ways to master uncertainty in engineering design, production and product usage alike. It gathers authoritative contributions by more than 30 scientists reporting on years of research in the areas of engineering, applied mathematics and law, thus offering a timely, comprehensive and multidisciplinary account of theories and methods for quantifying data, model and structural uncertainty, and of fundamental strategies for mastering uncertainty. It covers key concepts such as robustness, flexibility and resilience in detail. All the described methods, technologies and strategies have been validated with the help of three technical systems, i.e. the Modular Active Spring-Damper System, the Active Air Spring and the 3D Servo Press, which have been in turn developed and tested during more than ten years of cooperative research. Overall, this book offers a timely, practice-oriented reference guide to graduate students, researchers and professionals dealing with uncertainty in the broad field of mechanical engineering.

Download or read book Uncertainty written by Millett Granger Morgan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-08-31 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors explain the ways in which uncertainty is an important factor in the problems of risk and policy analysis. This book outlines the source and nature of uncertainty, discusses techniques for obtaining and using expert judgment, and reviews a variety of simple and advanced methods for analyzing uncertainty.

Download or read book Ignorance and Uncertainty written by Olivier Compte and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born of a belief that economic insights should not require much mathematical sophistication, this book proposes novel and parsimonious methods to incorporate ignorance and uncertainty into economic modeling, without complex mathematics. Economics has made great strides over the past several decades in modeling agents' decisions when they are incompletely informed, but many economists believe that there are aspects of these models that are less than satisfactory. Among the concerns are that ignorance is not captured well in most models, that agents' presumed cognitive ability is implausible, and that derived optimal behavior is sometimes driven by the fine details of the model rather than the underlying economics. Compte and Postlewaite lay out a tractable way to address these concerns, and to incorporate plausible limitations on agents' sophistication. A central aspect of the proposed methodology is to restrict the strategies assumed available to agents.