Nudge
by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein · Thaler & Sunstein
Thaler and Sunstein argue that how choices are presented systematically shifts behaviour, and that default settings, framing and feedback can be designed to improve savings, health and policy outcomes without restricting anyone's options.
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More resources on Decision Making & Reasoning
Clearer Thinking
Library of more than eighty free interactive tools and self-assessments from the research lab Spark Wave, covering cognitive biases, probability estimates, goal setting and logical fallacies, letting you test your own judgment against evidence.
lesswrong.com
LessWrong is a community blog and forum focused on rationality, decision theory, and cognitive biases. It features long-form essays and discussions, including the popular Sequences on Bayesian reasoning, critical thinking, and AI risk.
Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World
University of Washington course by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, with free lectures, readings and case studies. It covers misleading graphs, selection bias, causality claims, statistical traps and big-data hype, teaching learners to detect and refute bogus quantitative arguments.
Model Thinking
We live in a complex world with diverse people, firms, and governments whose behaviors aggregate to produce novel, unexpected phenomena. We see political uprisings, market crashes, and a never ending array of social trends. How do we make sense of it? Models. Evidence shows that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don't. And, moreover people who think with lots of models outperform people who use only one. Why do models make us better thinkers? Models help us to better organize information - to make sense of that fire hose or hairball of data (choose your metaphor) available on the Internet. Models improve our abilities to make accurate forecasts. They help us make better decisions and adopt more effective strategies. They even can improve our ability to design institutions and procedures. In this class, I present a starter kit of models: I start with models of tipping points. I move on to cover models explain the wisdom of crowds, models that show why some countries are rich and some are poor, and models that help unpack the strategic decisions of firm and politicians. The models covered in this class provide a foundation for future social science classes, whether they be in economics, political science, business, or sociology. Mastering this material will give you a huge leg up in advanced courses. They also help you in life. Here's how the course will work. For each model, I present a short, easily digestible overview lecture. Then, I'll dig deeper. I'll go into the technical details of the model. Those technical lectures won't require calculus but be prepared for some algebra. For all the lectures, I'll offer some questions and we'll have quizzes and even a final exam. If you decide to do the deep dive, and take all the quizzes and the exam, you'll receive a Course Certificate. If you just decide to follow along for the introductory lectures to gain some exposure that's fine too. It's all free. And it's all here to help make you a better thinker!
decisionresearch.org
Decision Research is a nonprofit research center focused on how people make decisions under risk and uncertainty, offering articles, publications, project descriptions, and resources on decision science and risk perception.
Decision Making
In this course, you will learn the concept of decision making from the rational and psychological points of view. We will discuss the limits to rationality; the interplay between emotional thinking and rational thinking when making decisions; the systematic errors provoked by our cognitive biases and by the use of heuristics; the role of emotions and intuition in decisions; the aleatory errors (noise); and possible remedies and leverage on all these aspects when making decisions.