Monday, October 18, 2021

Maxims for thinking analytically


A very interesting book recently came to my attention while I was visiting the US.  It's title is "Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The Wisdom of Legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser".  It is exactly what the title suggests.  I managed to read only about half of it as I bought it only a couple of days before my return flight so I had to mail it back home together with quite a few other books I had purchased (max 23 kilos allowed...).  Still, not here...

I can't wait to get it and finish reading it.  Easy to read but forces you to reflect and to often re-evaluate decisions made without deeper thinking.

This is from a post in Jeffrey Frankel's blog Views on the Economy and the World (Frankel, a renowned macroeconomist, is a colleague of Zeckhauser at Harvard) on this book:

I recommend it highly. This is not a collection of tangential papers published together in someone’s honor.  Rather each chapter consists of an immortal maxim of Richard’s together with applications to real-world decision-making, whether at the personal or public-policy level. There are 19 such pithy insights, such as “Think probabilistically about the world,” or “Good decisions sometimes have poor outcomes,” or “Eliminate regret.”  Dan skillfully weaves into each of his chapters concise contributions from a big set of Zeckhauser-admirers, including Max Bazerman, Jason Furman, Hsien Loong Lee, Jennifer Lerner, Barry Nalebuff, Larry Summers, among many others. My own contribution is to Chapter 10.  Richard’s 10th maxim is: “Errors of commission should be weighted the same as errors of omission.” 

Worth reading the rest of Frankel's post and, of course, buying and reading Zeckhoauser's book!

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