SOCIETY FOR JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING NEWSLETTER
The quarterly Society for Judgment and Decision Making newsletter can be downloaded from the SJDM site:
It features jobs, conferences, announcements, and more.
Enjoy!
Decision Science News / SJDM Newsletter Editor
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SOCIETY FOR JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2015
This year’s (2015) SJDM annual conference will be in Chicago, Illinois, November 20-23, 2015. Late registration and welcome reception will take place the evening of Friday, November 20.
Paul Slovic picture Before the reception, 3-5 PM Friday, there will be a tribute to Paul Slovic. Confirmed speakers include Daniel Kahneman, Baruch Fischhoff, Howard Kunreuther, John Payne, and others. Organizers are Ellen Peters (Chair), John Payne, Craig Fox, and Melissa Finucane.
Photo credit:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2004-07-14_2600x1500_chicago_lake_skyline.jpg
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OPT-IN VS OPT-OUT POLICIES
We talk a lot about default policies, in particular opt-in policies and opt-out policies (e.g., opt-in vs. opt-out policies for membership in organ donor pools).
When we speak about this stuff, people asking us questions often use the terms backwards or incorrectly. They say opt-in when they mean opt-out and they say opt-out when they mean opt-in. Or they use either when talking about forced choice. Here’s an example from the Chief Technical Officer of Lenovo making the mistake when talking about the Lenovo adware fiasco.
Q. What kind of quality assurance process would even allow for installing this kind of adware on Lenovo machines?
A. At a high level, the team that defines what is in these products will encounter stuff in the market, then they will say, “Here is something we want to do,” and they will engage an engineering team. Then we will go through this thing and make sure it adheres to our policies and practices. We make sure it doesn’t know who the individual is. We make sure it’s opt-in. But what was completely missed in this was the security exposure caused by the design of the certificate authority they used.
Q. There was nothing about this experience that was opt-in.
A. When you buy a Lenovo machine and turn it on, this was one of the programs that was presented to you. At that point, you could click a button that says, “I don’t want to use this.”
Q. I have to press you on that. What did the opt-in prose look like? Nobody recalls anything about this being opt-in.
A. I don’t have it in front of me, but I will get it to you. We want to make this right going forward. Part of this is what we are doing to fix the problem and what are we doing to make this right going forward. To that end, we’re trying to present – in much more plain English — a view of what these programs do.
If the program activated the adware for those who didn’t click “I don’t want to use this”, it was opt-out, not opt-in.
If the program made you answer before activating your computer, it was forced choice (or mandated choice), not opt-in.
HOW TO KEEP IT STRAIGHT
Opt-in means users are out by default and can choose (i.e., opt) to be in.
Opt-out means users are in by default and can choose (i.e., opt) to be out.
Forced choice means people are deprived of the product or service unless they choose to be in or out.
For many policies, forced choice is not an option. For instance, for organ donation, they can make you choose in order to get a driver’s license; they can deprive you of the license. But if you decide you don’t want a driver’s license, the default of the country applies to you. You can’t make being an organ donor a forced choice.
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THE BENEFITS OF FAMILIAR UNITS
This Mercator projection is famous for distorting land areas
Like Jake Hofman, we at Decision Science News love putting things in perspective. Watch this space for a paper we are writing on the topic. We recently thought:
To keep things simple, we only consider the area of each state, twice the area of each state, and the area of the entire USA as units. We only bother with twice states’ area thing for big countries (larger than 2,500,000 sq km). For compactness, we do not provide the reverse mapping from countries to US states. R code available upon request.
Here you are. A list of US states along with countries and dependencies that are roughly as large as them:
Smaller than Rhode Island (4,002 sq km):
Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Barbados, Bermuda, Comoros, Cook Islands, Dominica, Gaza Strip, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guernsey, Holy See (Vatican City), Hong Kong, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Seychelles, Singapore, São Tomé and Príncipe, Tonga, Tuvalu
As big as Rhode Island (4,002 sq km):
Cape Verde, French Polynesia
As big as Delaware (5,061 sq km):
Brunei, Cyprus, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, West Bank
As big as Connecticut (14,359 sq km):
Bahamas, East Timor, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Gambia (The), Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Qatar, Swaziland, Vanuatu
As big as New Jersey (22,590 sq km):
Belize, Djibouti, El Salvador, Israel, Slovenia
As big as Vermont (24,903 sq km):
Republic of Macedonia
As big as Massachusetts (27,337 sq km):
Haiti, Rwanda
As big as Hawaii (28,314 sq km):
Albania, Armenia, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Solomon Islands
As big as Maryland (32,134 sq km):
Belgium, Bhutan, Denmark, Estonia, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Moldova, Netherlands, Republic of China (Taiwan), Switzerland
As big as West Virginia (62,758 sq km):
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Togo
As big as South Carolina (82,898 sq km):
Austria, Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Panama, United Arab Emirates
As big as Maine (91,652 sq km):
French Guiana, Jordan, Portugal
As big as Indiana (94,327 sq km):
Hungary, South Korea
As big as Kentucky (104,664 sq km):
Iceland, Serbia and Montenegro
As big as Tennessee (109,158 sq km):
Guatemala
As big as Virginia (110,771 sq km):
Benin, Bulgaria, Cuba, Honduras, Liberia
As big as Pennsylvania (119,290 sq km):
Eritrea, Malawi, North Korea
As big as Mississippi (125,443 sq km):
Nicaragua
As big as Louisiana (134,273 sq km):
Greece
As big as New York (141,090 sq km):
Nepal, Tajikistan
As big as Iowa (145,754 sq km):
Bangladesh
As big as Wisconsin (169,652 sq km):
Suriname, Tunisia
As big as Missouri (180,545 sq km):
Uruguay
As big as Oklahoma (181,048 sq km):
Cambodia
As big as Washington (184,674 sq km):
Syria
As big as South Dakota (199,742 sq km):
Kyrgyzstan, Senegal
As big as Kansas (213,109 sq km):
Belarus
As big as Idaho (216,456 sq km):
Guyana
As big as Minnesota (225,181 sq km):
Laos, Romania, Uganda
As big as Michigan (250,737 sq km):
Ghana, Guinea, United Kingdom
As big as Colorado (269,618 sq km):
Burkina Faso, Gabon, New Zealand, Western Sahara
As big as Nevada (286,367 sq km):
Ecuador
As big as Arizona (295,274 sq km):
Italy, Philippines
As big as New Mexico (314,924 sq km):
Congo (Republic of the), Côte d’Ivoire, Finland, Malaysia, Norway, Oman, Poland, Vietnam
As big as Montana (380,847 sq km):
Germany, Japan, Zimbabwe
As big as California (423,999 sq km):
Cameroon, France, Iraq, Morocco, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen
As big as Texas (695,673 sq km):
Afghanistan, Bolivia, Botswana, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Tanzania, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zambia
As big as Alaska (1,700,133 sq km):
Algeria, Angola, Chad, Congo (Democratic Republic of the), Greenland, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Mali, Mexico, Mongolia, Niger, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan
Twice as big as Alaska (3,400,266 sq km):
Argentina, India, Kazakhstan
As big as the United States (9,826,630 sq km):
Australia, Brazil, Canada, China
Twice as big as the United States (19,653,260 sq km):
Russia
Map credit:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections#mediaviewer/File:Miller_projection_SW.jpg
Country Areas: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_area
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WEATHER FOR THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND GRAPHS AND PROBABILITIES
Click to visit
People ask us, “You folks at Decision Science News, how do you get your US weather forecasts?”
Because we like graphs and probabilities, we go to a page by US National Weather Service puts out that tells us for every hour in the next few days, the predicted temperature, the chance of precipitation, the predicted amount of rain, the predicted amount of snow, and that’s it.
Here’s how to get graphs for your location (Feb 2015)
1. Go to weather.gov
2. Enter your location code where it says “Local forecast by ‘City, St’ or ZIP code” at the top left.
3. On the resulting page, scroll all the way to the bottom and look for the link “Hourly Weather Graph” under “Additional Forecasts and Information” (or click the colorful “Hourly Weather Graph” at right).
4. On the resulting page, there will be a graph, but it will be a hot mess full of stuff you don’t care about. Stuff like dew point and wind direction. Bad defaults. Uncheck everything except:
5. Season to taste.
6. Save the resulting URL. Add it to your bookmarks toolbar. Make it your homepage. We have.
The link we use here in New York City is:
Or, as a link: http://1.usa.gov/1ELoek6
Note that you can just steal our link and replace “40.77664” with your latitude and “-73.95215” with your longitude, and it should just work inside the US.
If you don’t know your latitude or longitude, just go to Google or Bing and type “Los Angeles, CA latitude longitude” (or whatever) and it will show it to you. Note that “100 West” would be written as “-100” in the URL.
Enjoy your no nonsense, accurate, short term, localized weather forecast.
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CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Until March 8, 2015, applications are open for the 2015 Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality, which will take place on June 4–11, 2015, at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany.
The Summer Institute will gather renowned scientists and talented young researchers from around the globe for an interdisciplinary dialogue on human decision making. The Summer Institute aims to foster understanding of the process and quality of decision making when the conditions of rational choice theory are not met. To this end, it offers a forum for decision-making scholars from various disciplines to share their approaches, discuss their research, and be inspired.
This year’s Summer Institute focuses on how humans make decisions in the wild, including the economy, and how they should make those decisions. The keynote address will be given by Stanford business professor Kathleen Eisenhardt. On behalf of the directors of the Summer Institute, Gerd Gigerenzer and Ralph Hertwig, we invite young decision-making scholars from all fields to apply. Participation will be free, accommodation will be provided, and travel expenses will be partly reimbursed.
Applications are open until March 8, 2015.
Save the deadline: bit.ly/SI2015_deadline
See the website: bit.ly/SI2015_info
Please feel free to email any questions you might have to si2015@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
To pass on this call for applications, you can find a pdf-version here: bit.ly/SI2015_cfa
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IT’S A BEAUTY WAY TO GO
The 10th Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium will be held at Lake Louise, Alberta (in the heart of the Canadian Rockies) May 14-17, 2016. It will be hosted by the University of Alberta, and chaired by Gerald Häubl and Peter Popkowski Leszczyc.
The call for workshop proposals will be issued in May 2015, and the submission deadline will be September 15, 2015.
About the Choice Symposium:
The purpose of the Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium is to provide a forum for in-depth interaction among the world’s preeminent scholars (from various scientific disciplines) in the domains of human choice behavior and decision making. These domains are defined broadly. In particular, the Choice Symposium is designed to facilitate discourse that will lead to advances both in our theoretical/substantive understanding of how people make choices and in the methods for studying choice behavior. The Symposium entails a number of parallel workshops on specific, well-defined themes. Each of these workshops is (a) organized by two or three thought leaders on a theme that they propose and (b) attended by a total of 10-12 additional participants who are invited by the workshop organizers.
About the Venue:
Lake Louise is located in Alberta’s Banff National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The venue of the 2016 Choice Symposium is the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, an iconic lakefront hotel surrounded by spectacular mountains.
For more information:
www.choicesymposium.com
choicesymposium@gmail.com
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A CHOICE PREDICTION COMPETITION FOR DECISIONS UNDER RISK AND AMBIGUITY
SUBMISSION DEADLINE MAY 17, 2015
Ido Erev, that Eyal Ert, and Ori Plonsky (henceforth “we”) invite you to participate in a new choice prediction competition The goal of this competition is to facilitate the derivation of models that can capture the classical choice anomalies (including Allais, St. Petersburg, and Ellsberg paradoxes, and loss aversion) and provide useful forecasts of decisions under risk and ambiguity (with and without feedback).
The rules of the competition are described in http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/cpc2015. The submission deadline is May17, 2015. The prize for the winners is an invitation to be a co-author of the paper that summarizes the competition (the first part can be downloaded from http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/teachers/ert_eyal/CPC2015.pdf).
Here is a summary of the basic idea. We ran two experiments (replication and estimation studies, both are described in the site), and plan to run a third one (a target study) during March 2015. To participate in the competition you should email us (to eyal.ert at mail.huji.ac.il) a computer program that predicts the results of the target study.
The replication study replicated 14 well-known choice anomalies. The subjects faced each of 30 problems for 25 trials, received feedback after the 6th trial, and were paid for a randomly selected choice. The estimation study examined 60 problems randomly drawn from a space of problems from which the replication problems were derived. Our analysis of these 90 problems (see http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/cpc2015) shows that the classical anomalies are robust, and that the popular descriptive models (e.g., prospect theory) cannot capture all the phenomena with one set of parameters. We present one model (a baseline model) that can capture all the results, and challenge you to propose a better model. The models will be compared based on their ability to predict the results of the new target experiment. You are encouraged to use the results of the replication and estimation studies to calibrate your model. The winner will be the acceptable model (see criteria details in the site) that provides the most accurate predictions (lowest mean squared deviation between the predicted choice rates and the choice rates observed in the target study).
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ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH 2015 NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE OCTOBER 1 – 4, 2015 NEW ORLEANS, LA
We invite you to attend the 2015 North American Conference of the Association for Consumer Research, to be held at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, from Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, October 4. The conference theme is Advancing Connections. It is inspired by a desire to build better connections across different research paradigms and approaches and to facilitate connections among academics, practitioners, and public policy makers, as well as to consumers. In recent years, many members of the ACR community have expressed the desire for more research endeavors that take a broader perspective and have the potential to make greater impact on theory and practice. We hope and believe that when we individually and collectively reach across research silos and make meaningful connections it promotes rigorous and relevant work that generates important insights about consumer behavior.
We hope that encouraging broad participation is facilitated by this year’s conference location: New Orleans. New Orleans itself advances connections between a wide range of cuisines, musical styles (particularly as the birthplace of jazz), and historic celebrations–most importantly, of course, Mardi Gras. The Hilton Riverside has a prime downtown location and sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is steps from the streetcar lines and three blocks from the French Quarter. New Orleans is served by the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY).
Full information available at
Conference Co-chairs:
– Kristin Diehl, University of Southern California
– Carolyn Yoon, University of Michigan
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NOW WITH GRAPHICAL HOTNESS!
A few weeks ago, we posted a tool to help you choose a frequent flier program that is right for where you live.
But it had some limitations:
Well, Jake Hofman and I have fixed all that. We present the new “choose an airline loyalty program” tool for 2015. It has all the bullet-pointed goodness we advertise above. You can leave the destination field blank to see a count of all departures, or fill it in to limit things down to the places you go in the USA.
Try it. Switch your frequent flier program (if desired). Reap the benefits. Let us know how we can improve it. Or fork it “from the git hub” and do it yourself. This was made possible with R, dplyr and d3.
