Book Titles

Jumping to conclusions is a safer sport in the world of our imagination than it is in reality.

Statistics may produce many observations that appear to beg for causal explanations but not lend themselves to such explanations.

Any number that you are asked to consider as a possible solution to an estimation problem will induce an anchoring effect.

…moving first is an advantage in single-issue negotiations – for example, when price is the only issue to be settled between a buyer and a seller.

Substitution of questions inevitably produces systematic errors.

…our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.

An inability to be guided by a ‘healthy fear’ of bad consequences is a disastrous flaw.

…the evaluation of the risk depends on the choice of a measure – with the obvious possibility that the choice may have been guided by a preference for one outcome or another.

…[there is] a basic limitation in the ability of our mind to deal with small risks: we either ignore them altogether or give them far too much weight – nothing in between.

Rational or not, fear is painful and debilitating, and policy makers must endeavor to protect the public from fear, not only from real dangers.