Robyn Dawes 1936 – 2010
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December saw the passing on Robyn Dawes, without question a scholar who helped define the field of Judgment and Decision Making. The author of the field’s pre-eminent course text “Rational Choice in an Uncertain World”, Dawes was no doubt responsible for getting and keeping many students interested in the field. Dawes was an excellent writer. In addition to authoring what we think is the best-titled paper in the history of JDM “The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making”, his books were some of the few we read without skipping a word from start to finish. Dawes is unique: a mathematical clinical psychologist (some say the only one), a past-president of the JDM Society, a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an academic with no fear of controversy, and much more.
