Download or read book Risk Savvy written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-04-17 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, practical guide to making better decisions with our money, health and personal lives from Gerd Gigerenzer, the author of Reckoning with Risk. Risk-taking is essential for innovation, fun, and the courage to face the uncertainties in life. Yet for many important decisions, we're often presented with statistics and probabilities that we don't really understand and we inevitably rely on experts in the relevant fields - policy makers, financial advisors, doctors - to analyse and choose for us. But what if they don't quite understand the way the information is presented either? How do we make sure we're asking doctors the right questions about proposed treatment? Is there a rule of thumb that could help choose the right partner? This entertaining book shows us how to recognize when we don't have all the information and know what to do about it. Gerd Gigerenzer looks at examples from every aspect of life to identify the reasons for our collective misunderstanding of the risks we face. He shows how we can all use simple rules to avoid being manipulated into unrealistic fears or hopes, to make better-informed decisions, and to learn to understand risk and uncertainty in our own lives. 'Gigerenzer is brilliant and his topic is fabulous' Steven Pinker 'Catchily optimistic and slyly funny' Guardian Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books on heuristics and decision making, including Reckoning with Risk.
Download or read book Better Good Than Lucky written by Charles Rotblut and published by Traders Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: is a vice president with the American Association of Individual Investors. He is the editor of the AAII Journal and helps to manage the Stock Superstars portfolio. He authors the weekly AAII Investor Update newsletter and his commentary is published by both Seeking Alpha and Forbes.com.
Download or read book Calculated Risks written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the twentieth century, H. G. Wells predicted that statistical thinking would be as necessary for citizenship in a technological world as the ability to read and write. But in the twenty-first century, we are often overwhelmed by a baffling array of percentages and probabilities as we try to navigate in a world dominated by statistics. Cognitive scientist Gerd Gigerenzer says that because we haven't learned statistical thinking, we don't understand risk and uncertainty. In order to assess risk -- everything from the risk of an automobile accident to the certainty or uncertainty of some common medical screening tests -- we need a basic understanding of statistics. Astonishingly, doctors and lawyers don't understand risk any better than anyone else. Gigerenzer reports a study in which doctors were told the results of breast cancer screenings and then were asked to explain the risks of contracting breast cancer to a woman who received a positive result from a screening. The actual risk was small because the test gives many false positives. But nearly every physician in the study overstated the risk. Yet many people will have to make important health decisions based on such information and the interpretation of that information by their doctors. Gigerenzer explains that a major obstacle to our understanding of numbers is that we live with an illusion of certainty. Many of us believe that HIV tests, DNA fingerprinting, and the growing number of genetic tests are absolutely certain. But even DNA evidence can produce spurious matches. We cling to our illusion of certainty because the medical industry, insurance companies, investment advisers, and election campaigns have become purveyors of certainty, marketing it like a commodity. To avoid confusion, says Gigerenzer, we should rely on more understandable representations of risk, such as absolute risks. For example, it is said that a mammography screening reduces the risk of breast cancer by 25 percent. But in absolute risks, that means that out of every 1,000 women who do not participate in screening, 4 will die; while out of 1,000 women who do, 3 will die. A 25 percent risk reduction sounds much more significant than a benefit that 1 out of 1,000 women will reap. This eye-opening book explains how we can overcome our ignorance of numbers and better understand the risks we may be taking with our money, our health, and our lives.
Download or read book Risk Savvy written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new eye-opener on how we can make better decisions—by the author of Gut Feelings In this age of big data we often trust that expert analysis—whether it’s about next year’s stock market or a person’s risk of getting cancer—is accurate. But, as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer reveals in his latest book, Risk Savvy, most of us, including doctors, lawyers, and financial advisors, often misunderstand statistics, leaving us misinformed and vulnerable to exploitation. Yet there’s hope. In Risk Savvy, Gigerenzer gives us an essential guide to the science of good decision making, showing how ordinary people can make better decisions for their money, their health, and their families. Here, Gigerenzer delivers the surprising conclusion that the best results often come from considering less information and listening to your gut.
Download or read book Reckoning with Risk written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-04-24 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are ordinary people able to reason with risk? Detailing case histories and examples, this text presents readers with tools for understanding statistics. In so doing, it encourages us to overcome our innumeracy and empowers us to take responsibility for our own choices.
Download or read book Rationality for Mortals written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise appear. This work is extremely influential and has spawned an entire research program. This volume (which follows on a previous collection, Adaptive Thinking, also published by OUP) collects his most recent articles, looking at how people use "fast and frugal heuristics" to calculate probability and risk and make decisions. It includes a newly writen, substantial introduction, and the articles have been revised and updated where appropriate. This volume should appeal, like the earlier volumes, to a broad mixture of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others who study decision making.
Download or read book You Are What You Risk written by Michele Wucker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 international bestselling author of The Gray Rhino offers a bold new framework for understanding and re-shaping our relationship with risk and uncertainty to live more productive and successful lives. What drives a sixty-four-year-old woman to hurl herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Why do we often create bigger risks than the risks we try to avoid? Why are corporate boards newly worried about risky personal behavior by CEOs? Why are some nations quicker than others to recognize and manage risks like pandemics, technological change, and climate crisis? The answers define each person, organization, and society as distinctively as a fingerprint. Understanding the often-surprising origins of these risk fingerprints can open your eyes, inspire new habits, catalyze innovation and creativity, improve teamwork, and provide a beacon in a world that seems suddenly more uncertain than ever. How you see risk and what you do about it depend on your personality and experiences. How you make these cost-benefit calculations depend on your culture, your values, the people in the room, and even unexpected things like what you’ve eaten recently, the temperature, the music playing, or the fragrance in the air. Being alert to these often-unconscious influences will help you to seize opportunity and avoid danger. You Are What You Risk is a clarion call for an entirely new conversation about our relationship with risk and uncertainty. In this ground-breaking, accessible and eminently timely book, Michele Wucker examines why it’s so important to understand your risk fingerprint and how to make your risk relationship work better in business, life, and the world. Drawing on compelling risk stories around the world and weaving in economics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology research, Wucker bridges the divide between professional and lay risk conversations. She challenges stereotypes about risk attitudes, re-frames how gender and risk are related, and shines new light on generational differences. She shows how the new science of “risk personality” is re-shaping business and finance, how healthy risk ecosystems support economies and societies, and why embracing risk empathy can resolve conflicts. Wucker shares insights, practical tools, and proven strategies that will help you to understand what makes you who you are –and, in turn, to make better choices, both big and small.
Download or read book How to Stay Smart in a Smart World written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms that beat us in chess, find us romantic partners, and tell us to “turn right in 500 yards.” Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacing people with software might make the world a better place—while tech industry critics warn darkly about surveillance capitalism. Despite their differing views of the future, they all agree: machines will soon do everything better than humans. In How to Stay Smart in a Smart World, Gerd Gigerenzer shows why that’s not true, and tells us how we can stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms. Machines powered by artificial intelligence are good at some things (playing chess), but not others (life-and-death decisions, or anything involving uncertainty). Gigerenzer explains why algorithms often fail at finding us romantic partners (love is not chess), why self-driving cars fall prey to the Russian Tank Fallacy, and how judges and police rely increasingly on nontransparent “black box” algorithms to predict whether a criminal defendant will reoffend or show up in court. He invokes Black Mirror, considers the privacy paradox (people want privacy, but give their data away), and explains that social media get us hooked by programming intermittent reinforcement in the form of the “like” button. We shouldn’t trust smart technology unconditionally, Gigerenzer tells us, but we shouldn’t fear it unthinkingly, either.
Download or read book App Savvy written by Ken Yarmosh and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can you make your iPad or iPhone app stand out in the highly competitive App Store? While many books simply explore the technical aspects of iPad and iPhone app design and development, App Savvy also focuses on the business, product, and marketing elements critical to pursuing, completing, and selling your app -- the ingredients for turning a great idea into a genuinely successful product. Whether you're a designer, developer, entrepreneur, or just someone with a unique idea, App Savvy explains every step in the process, with guidelines for planning a solid concept, engaging customers early and often, developing your app, and launching it with a bang. Author Ken Yarmosh details a proven process for developing successful apps, and presents numerous interviews with the App Store's most prominent publishers. Learn about the App Store and how Apple's mobile devices function Follow guidelines for vetting and researching app ideas Validate your ideas with customers -- and create an app they’ll be passionate about Assemble your development team, understand costs, and establish a workable process Build your marketing plan while you develop your application Test your working app extensively before submitting it to the App Store Assess your app's performance and keep potential buyers engaged and enthusiastic
Download or read book Climate Savvy written by Lara J. Hansen and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2010-10-13 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change demands a change in how we envision, prioritize, and implement conservation and management of natural resources. Addressing threats posed by climate change cannot be simply an afterthought or an addendum, but must be integrated into the very framework of how we conceive of and conduct conservation and management. In Climate Savvy, climate change experts Lara Hansen and Jennifer Hoffman offer 18 chapters that consider the implications of climate change for key resource management issues of our time—invasive species, corridors and connectivity, ecological restoration, pollution, and many others. How will strategies need to change to facilitate adaptation to a new climate regime? What steps can we take to promote resilience? Based on collaboration with a wide range of scientists, conservation leaders, and practitioners, the authors present general ideas as well as practical steps and strategies that can help cope with this new reality. While climate change poses real threats, it also provides a chance for creative new thinking. Climate Savvy offers a wide-ranging exploration of how scientists, managers, and policymakers can use the challenge of climate change as an opportunity to build a more holistic and effective philosophy that embraces the inherent uncertainty and variability of the natural world to work toward a more robust future.
Download or read book The Art of Risk written by Kayt Sukel and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are risk-takers born or made? Why are some more willing to go out on a limb (so to speak) than others? How do we weigh the value of opportunities large or small that may have the potential to change the course of our lives? These are just a few of the questions that author Kayt Sukel tackles, applying the latest research in neuroscience and psychology to compelling real-world situations. Building on a portfolio of work that has appeared in such publications as Scientific American, Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and more, Sukel offers an in-depth look at risk-taking and its role in the many facets of life that resonates on a personal level. Smart, progressive, and truly enlightening, The Art of Risk blends riveting case studies and hard-hitting science to explore risk-taking and how it impacts decision-making in work, play, love, and life, providing insight in understanding individual behavior and furthering personal success.
Download or read book Vices of the Mind written by Quassim Cassam and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading philosopher Quassim Cassam introduces epistemic vices, drawing on recent political phenomena including Brexit and Trump to explore such 'vices of the mind'. Manifesting as character traits, attitudes, or thinking styles, epistemic vices prevent us from having or sharing knowledge. Cassam gives an account of the nature and importance of these vices, which include closed-mindedness, intellectual arrogance, wishful thinking, and prejudice. In providing the first extensive coverage of vice epistemology, an exciting new area of philosophical research, Vices of the Mind uses real examples drawn primarily from the world of politics to develop a compelling theory of epistemic vice. Key events such as the 2003 Iraq War and the 2016 Brexit vote, and notable figures including Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are analysed in detail to illustrate what epistemic vice looks like in the modern world. The traits covered in this landmark work include a hitherto unrecognised epistemic vice called 'epistemic insouciance'. Cassam examines both the extent to which we are responsible for our failings and the factors that make it difficult to know our own vices. If we are able to overcome self-ignorance and recognise our epistemic vices, then is there is anything we can do about them? Vices of the Mind picks up on this concern in its conclusion by detailing possible self-improvement strategies and closing with a discussion of what makes some epistemic vices resistant to change.
Download or read book Savvy Investing written by Gary D. Lemon and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to provide individual investors who have as little as $1,000 to invest with the information necessary to earn a high return from investing in the stock market. Playing “the game” intelligently, as outlined in this book, will allow the small investor to earn a return better than most professional investors. Although the theories behind investment can be very complicated, the individual investor does not need to understand these theories in order to outperform the so-called experts. This book will show the reader the steps necessary to become a savvy investor and beat the pros. The good news is you can be a savvy investor and spend only a few minutes each year on your investment portfolio. It sounds almost too good to be true, but it is. One of the most important things successful investors can do is concentrate on the variables they can control and not worry about the variables they cannot control. When constructing a stock portfolio, the two variables an individual investor can control are the costs associated with any investment and the risk related to an individual’s portfolio. Adjusting these two elements in an intelligent way can have a dramatic impact on the return earned from one’s investments, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of extra dollars to the investor’s investment account.
Download or read book Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-10-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart invites readers to embark on a new journey into a land of rationality that differs from the familiar territory of cognitive science and economics. Traditional views of rationality tend to see decision makers as possessing superhuman powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and all of eternity in which to ponder choices. To understand decisions in the real world, we need a different, more psychologically plausible notion of rationality, and this book provides it. It is about fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules for making decisions when time is pressing and deep thought an unaffordable luxury. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? Can judgments based simply on one good reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? Simple Heuristics explores these questions, developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analyses. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can produce adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop out rates, and playing the stock market. As an interdisciplinary work that is both useful and engaging, this book will appeal to a wide audience. It is ideal for researchers in cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, as well as in economics and artificial intelligence. It will also inspire anyone interested in simply making good decisions.
Download or read book Better Doctors Better Patients Better Decisions written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How eliminating “risk illiteracy” among doctors and patients will lead to better health care decision making. Contrary to popular opinion, one of the main problems in providing uniformly excellent health care is not lack of money but lack of knowledge—on the part of both doctors and patients. The studies in this book show that many doctors and most patients do not understand the available medical evidence. Both patients and doctors are “risk illiterate”—frequently unable to tell the difference between actual risk and relative risk. Further, unwarranted disparity in treatment decisions is the rule rather than the exception in the United States and Europe. All of this contributes to much wasted spending in health care. The contributors to Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions investigate the roots of the problem, from the emphasis in medical research on technology and blockbuster drugs to the lack of education for both doctors and patients. They call for a new, more enlightened health care, with better medical education, journals that report study outcomes completely and transparently, and patients in control of their personal medical records, not afraid of statistics but able to use them to make informed decisions about their treatments.
Download or read book Gut Feelings written by Gerd Gigerenzer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-06-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is split second decision-making superior to deliberation? Gut Feelings delivers the science behind Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the cognitive, emotional, and social repertoire we call intuition, a suite of gut feelings that have evolved over the millennia specifically for making decisions. Gladwell drew heavily on Gigerenzer's research. But Gigerenzer goes a step further by explaining just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma (BusinessWeek).
Download or read book Fedsavvy written by Carol Schmidlin and published by Advantage Media Group. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are your federal benefits at risk? Are we at the point of every man/woman for themselves? FedSavvy will take you through the complexities of the federal retirement system so that you can make informed decisions about your financial future. Federal Employees have some great benefits, however, going through the maze to figure out if you are taking advantage of them can sometimes be complicated. At present, most federal employees are feeling threatened because the Congressional Budget Office is dangling a knife over their benefi ts. Build a meaningful and profi table retirement profi le, by understanding: • How to calculate your CSRS and FERS pension • Documents you will need to have • The best dates to retire • Credit for unused sick leave and annual leave • How does Social Security affect the CSRS annuity • VCP - the best benefi t for CSRS and CSRS Offset • How to not only save but allocate your funds in the Thrift Savings Plan • Sequential Income Planning with TSP • Magic Numbers for TSP • An understanding of the Federal Insurance Programs: FEHB, FEGLI, and FLTCIP
