REVIEWS AND REVISIONS MADE PUBLIC There is unnecessary secrecy around the review process. Forward-thinkers, such as those at Nature, have experimented with open peer review, but ultimately decided the world was not ready. However, large advances sometimes happen via small steps, and a toned-down version might open minds to open review. The good people over […]
GIGERENZER INTERVIEWED IN SALON.COM Leading Judgment and Decision-Making scholar Gerd Gigerenzer was interviewed in Salon.com this week about his new book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious in a piece amusingly titled “Should National Security Depend on Michael Chertoff’s Gut?” The interview, which covers September 11th, fly balls, high school dropouts, illegal drugs, and […]
JOURNAL OF CHOICE MODELLING Open-access journals all officially the rage. Here’s another newbie, possibly of interest to you, the Decision Science News reader. We are pleased to announce the launch of the “Journal of Choice Modelling”, a new open access peer reviewed journal dedicated to the field of choice modelling. The journal publishes theoretical and […]
A BETTER WAY TO DECIDE ABOUT LYING Aldert Vrij and other researchers at the University of Portsmouth have found that often-recommended lie detection methods, such as looking for verbal or visual cues of deception, aren’t terribly effective. A promising approach may be to ask interviewees to answer in a more cognitively-demanding fashion, such as […]
ARGUMENTS AGAINST ALL SIGNIFICANCE TESTS This week, the always-provocative J. Scott Armstrong submits this comment to Decision Science News: “About two years ago, I was a reasonable person who argued that tests of statistical significance were useful in some limited situations. After completing research for “Significance tests harm progress in forecasting” in the International Journal […]
APPLIED ECONOMICS RESEARCH BULLETIN Decision Science News looks with intrigue bordering on fascination at a new chimera called Applied Economics Research Bulletin. Some of the unusual features: Happy being a rest stop on the way to established journals – As they say “We expect that manuscripts published in the Applied Economics Research Bulletin will, in […]
IMPACTFUL, IMPROBABLE EVENTS CAPTURE THE IMAGINATION Decision Science News is noticing how attention is turning towards the unlikely events that can change the world. Institutions are undergoing epidemic preparations. Harvard Business Review has an feature on pandemics with two sections written by noted decision science researcher Baruch Fischhoff. A podcast is available here. A book […]
WHEN DOES DISEASE SCREENING HELP? The judgment and decision making crowd is buzzing about the idea that screening for certain diseases (such as breast or lung cancer) can be ineffective or even harmful. Some of the readings dans le vent: Peter B. Bach; James R. Jett; Ugo Pastorino; Melvyn S. Tockman; Stephen J. Swensen; Colin […]
COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF A COMMON MEASURE Dan Goldstein and Nassim Taleb have written a paper called “We don’t quite know what we are talking about when we talk about volatility” which looks at what finance professionals and students do when asked for estimates of standard deviation.In particular, they posed this question: A stock (or a […]
A CHANGE OF WEIGHT REVEALS NEWTON’S FLAW Interestingly, Newton’s enumerated solution to Pepys’ problem is correct (see previous DSN entry), but the logic is wrong, as Statistician Stephen Stigler points out. The problem is now solved by with bionomial distribution: the probability of A is the greatest. For those who speak R, the probabilities are […]
Subscribe to Decision Science News by Email (one email per week, easy unsubscribe)
