Decision Science News

MARKETING / POLITICS JOBS FOR APPLIED DECISION TYPES

Position: Senior Market Segmentation Specialist
Company: CA, Inc.
Location: Framingham, MA, Midtown Manhattan or Islandia, Long Island
Salary: $90-$110K + full-time benefits
Contact: Please email resume to dominique.goldstein at ca.com
CA, (NYSE: CA), one of the world’s leading independent, enterprise management software companies, unifies and simplifies complex information technology (IT) management across the enterprise for greater business results.

Job Overview
The Senior Market Segmentation Specialist develops and leads segmentation, market research, and market analysis projects. He/she engages heavily with other groups within CA to assist in business planning, market understanding, customer targeting and campaign planning. These groups include the business units, field marketing, executive management and other corporate marketing groups. This position involves providing actionable insights based on largely quantitative analysis.

Key Responsibilities

Preferred Education

Work Experience

Specific Skills and Certifications

Position-Specific Authorities

Jobs at the Analyst Institute

The Analyst Institute assists organizations in building testing into their voter contact efforts, and is a clearinghouse for evidence-based best practices in progressive voter contact.

We have four functions. First, we serve as a clearinghouse for evidence-based best practices in voter contact. Second, we directly assist organizations involved in on-going research, especially when that research addresses topics of wide interest. Third, we ensure that the highest research priorities are pursued in the present election cycle. And fourth, we facilitate data analysts and related professionals in sharing and collaborating.

Contact: Cover letter and resume to Jobs@analystinstitute.org

SENIOR ANALYST

Responsibilities
The Senior Analyst(s) will work closely with partner organizations in designing, executing, and analyzing their voter contact evaluations. These evaluations will usually involve randomized field experiments designed in the spring and implemented in the summer and fall. Any given study will likely involve membership recruitment, voter registration, voter persuasion, and/or get-out-the-vote efforts.

This person must have experience with field research, be self-motivated, and thrive in a dynamic start-up environment. This person may work as a part-time consultant or as a full-time employee of the Analyst Institute.

Qualifications

• Experience with field research, especially field experiments.
• Detail oriented and highly organized.
• Experience working on, or with political campaigns.
• Ability to work well under tight deadlines.
• Excellent verbal and written skills.
• Understanding of statistics and the methodology of political experiments and measurement.
• PhD or MA in social science.

Start Date: Flexible, ASAP
Location: Washington DC, McPherson Square
Deadline: 4/11
Analyst Institute is an equal opportunity employer. Salary is commensurate with experience.

ANALYST

Responsibilities
Analyst(s) will work closely with others in the Analyst Institute. Analyst(s) will be involved in a wide range of activities including managing voter files, editing documents and presentations, cleaning and evaluating experimental data, and working with partner organizations in executing and analyzing their voter contact evaluations. The Analyst Institute’s research will usually be randomized field experiments involving membership recruitment, voter registration, voter persuasion, and/or get-out-the-vote efforts.

This person must have a background in a quantitative field (computer science, mathematics, statistics, econometrics, etc.), be self-motivated, and thrive in a dynamic start-up environment. Experience with field research and/or political campaigns is a plus.

Qualifications

• Comfortable with statistics software (SPSS, Stata, Excel, R, etc.)
• Detail oriented and highly organized.
• Ability to work well under tight deadlines.
• Excellent analytical skills.
• Able to learn quickly, and able to develop skills as needed.
• Basic understanding of methodology of political experiments and measurement.

Start Date: Flexible, ASAP
Location: Washington DC, McPherson Square
Salary: Commensurate with experience
Deadline: 4/11

** DSN FLASH**
Bounded Rationality Summer School deadline extended till April 7th
***

POSTDOCS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE/REASONING ON THE SEMANTIC WEB

The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, under the direction of Gerd Gigerenzer, is seeking applicants for postdoctoral fellow positions for a period of 3 years. All positions can begin as soon as May 1st 2008, but later or earlier start dates are possible.

Candidates should be interested in studying the cognitive mechanisms underlying bounded, social, and ecological rationality in real-world domains. Current and past researchers in our group have backgrounds in psychology, cognitive science, economics, mathematics, biology, and computer science to name but a few. These positions are associated with a multi-institution grant from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme, entitled The Large Knowledge Collider (LarKC): a platform for large scale integrated reasoning and Web-search. In this project, our role is to study how human cognition can be used as a model for information retrieval and reasoning on the semantic web. For example, by using computational models of how people search for information in literature databases we can learn not only about how humans solve the task, but also how this understanding can suggest novel approaches to automated reasoning on the semantic web.

The center provides excellent resources, including support staff and equipment for conducting experiments and computer simulations, generous travel support for conferences, and, most importantly, the time to think.

For more information about our group please visit our homepage at www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/abc and www.larkc.eu to learn more information about the project. The fellows will work under the direction of Henry Brighton, Joerg Rieskamp, & Lael Schooler. If you have questions, please email larkc2008 (at) mpib-berlin.mpg.de. The working language of the center is English, and knowledge of German is not necessary for living in Berlin and enjoying the active life and cultural riches of this city. We strongly encourage applications from women, and members of minority groups. The Max Planck Society is committed to employing more individuals with disabilities and especially encourages them to apply.

Please submit applications (consisting of a cover letter describing research interests, curriculum vitae, up to five reprints, and 3 letters of recommendation) by April 10th, 2008, when the review of applications will begin. However, applications will be accepted until the position is filled. The preferred method of submission is a single PDF file for the cover letter and CV, plus PDF copies of the reprints e-mailed to larkc2008 (at) mpib-berlin.mpg.de. Referees should send letters of recommendation directly to the email address given above.

Alternatively, under exceptional circumstances, they can be mailed to
Ms. Ilona Prodeus
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Königin-Luise-Strasse 5
14195 Berlin
Germany

POSTDOC OPPORTUNITY AT YALE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

Friend of Decision Science News Cade Massey alerts us to the following opportunity of interest:

The Yale School of Management anticipates appointing a Postdoctoral Associate in Organizational Behavior for a period of two years, with a starting date of September 2008. The Postdoctoral Associate will serve as a Behavioral Lab Research Associate of the Behavioral Laboratory in collaboration with the full-time Lab Manager, and will coordinate several ongoing research projects. The remainder of the Associates time will be dedicated to collaboration with faculty on new and ongoing programs of research and conducting independent research in the Associates area of interest. The position will not require any teaching although opportunities exist for those interested. Salary will be competitive, Yale Benefits are included, and there is the possibility of a research allowance.

We have a growing community of researchers who explore basic and applied problems based in psychology, sociology and economics. We will select an applicant who plans to work collaboratively on research with one or more of the faculty members in the organizational behavior program (James Baron, Heidi Brooks, Daylian Cain, Erica Dawson, Joel Podolny, Cade Massey, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Victor Vroom, and Amy Wrzesniewski). There may also be opportunities to collaborate with faculty whose work is related to research in these areas. The Yale SOM Web page (http://www.mba.yale.edu/faculty/index.asp) provides some detail about faculty research interests.

This position is open to candidates who have recently earned their PhD degree, or who are expecting their PhD in 2008, in any area of psychology or organizational behavior. Experience with methods of experimentation at the social psychological level of analysis is necessary. In particular, experience in conducting computer, web-based, and interpersonal interaction-based experiments is a plus.

Application

Yale University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employee. Yale values diversity among its students, staff, and faculty, and strongly encourages applications from women and underrepresented minorities. Applicants should submit their CV, statement of research interests, and 2 letters of recommendation. Applications are welcome immediately, and they should be received by March 31, 2008 to receive full consideration. To apply online, visit: http://mba.yale.edu/faculty/openings.htm Please note that the Yale School of Management will only be accepting electronic applications. Please visit the website for instructions on how to submit letters of recommendation electronically.

ARIELY, FREY TO SPEAK IN LONDON

We like our history natural

With top-notch JDM researchers at London School of Economics, University College London, London Business School, Westminster Business School, London Metropolitan University, City University London, Imperial College, Birkbeck College, and two weekly JDM talk series (the London Judgment and Decision Making seminar, and the Economics of Behaviour and Decision Making seminar, it is no wonder why so many feel that London is the center of the judgment and decision-making research universe. The next few weeks’ speakers, Dan Ariely and Bruno Frey, are extraordinary, which is ordinary for this town.

Dan Ariely at LSE

Date: Monday 17 March 2008
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Professor Dan Ariely
Chair: Professor Lawrence Phillips

Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? Why do we repeatedly make the same mistakes when we make our selections? How do our expectations influence our actual opinions and decisions? The answers, as revealed by behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely of MIT, will surprise you.

Dan Ariely is author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, (HarperCollins, £14.99). He is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT where he holds a joint appointment between MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management. He is the principal investigator of the Lab’s eRationality group and co-director of the Lab’s SIMPLICITY consortium. He is interested in issues of rationality, irrationality, decision-making, behavioral economics, and consumer welfare. Projects include examinations of online auction behaviors, personal health monitoring, the effects of different pricing mechanisms, and the development of systems to overcome day-to-day irrationality.

Ariely received a PhD in business administration from Duke University, a PhD and MA in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a BA in psychology from Tel Aviv University.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. For more information, email events@lse.ac.uk or call 020 7955 6043.

If you are planning to attend this event and would like details on how to get here and what time to arrive, please refer to Coming to an event at LSE.

Bruno Frey at Economics of Behaviour and Decision Making (at London Business School)

Date: Tuesday April 1, 2008
Time: 5:30PM -7PM
Speaker: Professor Bruno Frey
Venue: London Business School room LT3

Frey is author of more than a dozen books (all available in English and German, and including a number of translations into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese) and more than 350 articles in professional academic journals (most of them in economics and a few in political science, sociology and psychology) including the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Oxford Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Kyklos, Review of Economic Studies, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Public Choice, Review of Income and Wealth, European Journal of Political Research, International Organization, Public Interest, Rationality and Society, Journal of Economic Psychology, Journal of Economic History, etc.

Photo credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/aficionadillos2/2144294675/

DECISION MAKING AND PLANNING UNDER LOW LEVELS OF PREDICTABILITY

The International Journal of Forecasting invites you to submit a paper for a special issue on how to make decisions and plan (or formulate strategies) when our ability to forecast is low, or in some cases nonexistent.

During the last several decades it has become increasingly clear that there are a wide range of events that we cannot predict accurately or reliably. For instance, we now know that the forecasts of experts are not usually more accurate than those of simple models, which in turn are at least as accurate as the most statistically sophisticated ones in many cases. We also know that professional investors do not seem to performbetter than making a random selection of stocks or bonds, and that past performance is not a good indication of future performance. The consequences of this for managing risk are severe. For instance, none of the consequential bank lending crises of the past decades, including the events in 1982 (Latin American lending), 1989–91 (real estate and savings and loans), 1997 (Asian contagion), and 2007 (subprime) were predicted even a couple of months in advance. These failures raise a lot of questions about the role and usefulness of forecasting. Finally, while uncertainty cannot be measured by standard methods that assume that errors are thin-tailed (normally distributed), independent of one another and constant, more sophisticated methods do not seem to produce more reliable results. This raises the question of what we can do practically to face future uncertainty realistically and rationally, and how we should manage our risks.

The editors are soliciting a broad range of papers covering all areas of social science (as well as some outside) including judgmental decision making, finance, business, government, medicine, risk management, and even earthquakes, floods and climate change; in fact, any area where our ability to forecast is limited while the resulting uncertainty is huge.

The critical question that this special issue aims to address is what we can do if we accept the serious limits of predictability in many situations and the huge uncertainty surrounding our future decisions and plans. It is therefore critical to consider and provide practical solutions for how we can live with such uncertainty without either being paralyzed by hesitation, or falling victims of the illusion of control by wrongly believing that we are able to forecast and pretending that uncertainty does not exist.

All contributions will be refereed and maintained at the usual IJF standards. Please refer to the guidelines for preparing papers for submission at http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/call.pdf

The deadline for first submissions is June 2008. Please contact one of the editors for inquiries concerning the suitability of a proposed paper. Special issue editors Spyros Makridakis INSEAD, France E-mail address: Spyros.Makridakis at gmail.com. Nassim Nicholas Taleb London Business School, UK E-mail address: nnt at theblackswan.org

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fire_brace/7257910/

7TH MAX PLANCK SUMMER INSTITUTE ON BOUNDED RATIONALITY

ANNOUNCEMENT
The 7th Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality in Psychology and Economics will
introduce graduate students and early career researchers from different disciplines to the
study of bounded and ecological rationality. This novel approach to human decision making
examines the simple processes and cognitive mechanisms that enable good decision
making in specific environments. This perspective has seen rapid theoretical development
over the last decade with psychologists and economists taking the lead in showing how the
study of bounded rationality can provide a greater understanding of the human mind and
adaptive decision making.

Classical theories of decision making are largely based on a vision of rationality that is
unrealistic. For example, “rational” humans are often imagined to be equipped with
unlimited knowledge, time, and information-processing power. In contrast, to understand
the way that people with limited resources actually make good decisions in everyday social
and economic tasks, bounded rationality (which should not be confused with optimization
under constraints or the heuristics and biases program) starts with a more psychologically
plausible perspective: Humans are able to make good decisions by using simple heuristic
processes that are adapted to particular task environments (i.e. ecological rationality).

AIM
The main objective of the Summer Institute is to introduce students from various fields to
the study of bounded rationality. This year our specific focus will be on ecological
rationality. The first goal will be to provide an overview of the main research areas in
which ecological rationality has been studied. This will include an introduction to the
specific research methods used through participation in experiments, observations, and
simulations. As well, participants and faculty will discuss several key findings from
economics and psychology. To insure active involvement of all participants, lectures will be
balanced with small group workshops. As a second goal, the Summer Institute will also
give participants the opportunity to present their own research in a poster session, in order
to facilitate feedback, discussion and future research development.

BOARD
The interdisciplinary Summer Institute is directed by Gerd Gigerenzer (Max-Planck-
Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany). This year’s keynote speaker will be
Nobel laureate Vernon Smith. Other faculty will include members of the organizing
institute, as well as several invited international speakers from a variety of disciplines.

APPLICATION
To ensure an excellent learning environment participation in the summer school is limited
to approximately 35 talented graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from around the
world. The summer institute provides stipends to all participants to cover part of their
expenses for travel and accommodation. Precise information on the stipends will be
announced to the applicants at a later point in time. Interested students should apply by
April 7, 2008 with a brief application letter, CV, and one short letter of recommendation,
preferably sent by email.

CONTACT
For more details on the Summer Institute and the application process, please visit our
website: www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/summerinstitute

JOBS IN THE UK AT DECTECH AND OXFORD

DECISION TECHNOLOGY

Decision Technology is a commercial decision research spin-out, based in central London, co-founded by Nick Chater and Henry Stott. We work internationally, mainly advising large corporations on consumer decision making. We are currently hiring several analysts, ideally with a mix of very strong academic background and ability, combined with enthusiasm for working in a fast-paced commercial environment, with potentially rapid career development.

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/LS576/PhD_and_Graduate_Recruiting/

We also have one post dedicated to research on football (soccer) prediction, in collaboration with The Times newspaper.

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/LS575/Football_Research_Position/

If you are interested, please contact Dr Ian Graham i.graham at dectech.org

NUFFIELD COLLEGE – UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Five-Year Research Fellowship in Experimental Social Sciences Nuffield College intends to appoint, with effect from 1st September 2008, a Research Fellow in Experimental Social Science (RFESS).

Applications are invited from post-doctoral researchers of any country wishing to undertake research in any area of experimental social sciences. The main interests of the College are in Economics, Politics and Sociology, but these are broadly construed to include, for example, social science approaches to history, social and medical statistics, international relations, social psychology, public policy, and social policy.

The College has recently begun an initiative in Experimental Social Science that includes a 20 station experimental lab that is dedicated to experimental research by scholars and students at Oxford University. It also includes a regular seminar on Experimental Social Science that highlights the research of leading experimental social scientists. The RFESS will be expected to play an active role in promoting the development of the Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Science. The RFESS’s main responsibility is to engage in independent scholarly research and to promote the development of experimental social science in the College. He or she will have no teaching or administrative obligations but will be expected to participate in the intellectual life of the College. This will include contributing to interdisciplinary exchanges that build on Experimental Social Science. The RFESS will be expected to organize, periodically, seminars or workshops in the area of experimental social science over the course of the five-year term of their appointment and the College can help finance and organize these activities.

• Research Fellow salary scale points 12-19: £31,625-£41,348.
• Free lunch and dinner in College (Common Table)
• Membership of the Senior Common Room

The Fellowship is intended for scholars from any country, who have completed a doctoral thesis and who are in the early years of an active research career. The Fellowship is equivalent to an Assistant Professorship in terms of academic standing, but it carries no teaching obligations. The Fellowship would normally be taken up on 1st September 2008. The appointment will be for up to 5 years.

Further particulars and an application form can be obtained from the College web
page: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk or from the Administrative Officer, Nuffield
College, Oxford OX1 1NF. Email: justine.crump at nuffield.ox.ac.uk. Applications must be received by Friday, 4 April 2008.

MAJOR CHOICE STRATEGIES

The editor’s somewhat annotated copy of Hastie & Dawes

Reid Hastie and Robyn M. Dawes, in their classic Rational Choice in an Uncertain World (pp. 232-234), outline some “major choice strategies,” stemming from several schools including the Heuristics and Biases, Adaptive Decision Maker, and Fast and Frugal research programs:

Strategy: DOMINANCE
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	LOW	NON-COMPENSATORY	ALTERNATIVE	YES
“Search for an alternative that is at least as good as every other alternative on all important attributes and choose it or find an alternative that is worse than any other alternative on all attributes and throw it out of the choice set.”
Strategy: ADDITIVE LINEAR (Multi-Attribute Utility Theory)
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	V. HIGH	COMPENSATORY	ALTERNATIVE	YES
“Weight all the attributes by their importance (with reference to the current goals of the decision maker). Then consider each alternative one at a time and calculate a global utility by valuing each attribute, weighting it by its importance, and adding up the weighted values.”
Strategy: ADDITIVE DIFFERENCE
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	V. HIGH	COMPENSATORY	ATTRIBUTE	YES
“Consider two alternatives at a time; compare attribute by attribute, estimating the difference between the two alternatives; and sum up the differences across the attributes to provide a single overall difference score across all attributes for that pair. Carry the winner of this comparison over to the next viable alternative and make the same comparison. At the end of this process, the best alternative is the one that has ‘won’ all the pairwise comparisons.”
Strategy: SATISFICING (CONJUNCTIVE)
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	LOW	NON-COMPENSATORY	ALTERNATIVE	NO
“First set ‘acceptability’ cutoff points on all important attributes; then look for the first alternative that is at least as good as the cutoff values on all important attributes or use the strategy to select a set of good-enough alternatives (all above the cutoff points) for further consideration.”
Strategy: DISJUNCTIVE
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	LOW	NON-COMPENSATORY	ALTERNATIVE	NO
“First, set ‘acceptability’ cutoff points on the important attributes; then look for the first alternative that is at least as good as the cutoff value on any attribute or use the strategy to select a set of alternatives that are very good on at least one dimension for further consideration.”
Strategy: LEXICOGRAPHIC (AND TAKE-THE-BEST)
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	MEDIUM	NON-COMPENSATORY	ATTRIBUTE	NO
“First, review the attributes and pick the one most important attribute; then choose the beest alternative on that attribute. If there are several “winners” on the first attribute, go on to the next most important attribute and pick the best remaining alternative(s) on that attribute. Repeat until only one alternative is left … [Similar to the] take-the-best fast-and-frugal heuristic (successful in choice and judgment environments that reflect the distributions of alternatives and attribute values in real, everyday environments). The only adjustment to our description would be to substitute the word ‘validity’ (predictive accuracy) for ‘importance’; order the attributes considered by their past validity in discriminating between good and bad alternatives.”
Strategy: ELIMINATION BY ASPECTS
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	MEDIUM	NON-COMPENSATORY	ATTRIBUTE	NO
“Pick the first attribute that is salient and set a cutoff ‘acceptability’ point on that attribute. Throw out all alternatives that are below the cutoff on that one attribute. Then pick the next most attention-getting attribute, set an ‘acceptability’ cutoff on that attribute, and again throw out all alternatives that are below the cutoff. Repeat until only one alternative is left.”
Strategy: RECOGNITION HEURISTIC
	Mental Effort	Compensatory vs. Noncompensatory?	Whole vs. Part	Exhausive?
	LOW	NON-COMPENSATORY	ALTERNATIVE	NO
“In some choices, people are so poorly informed about the alternatives that they simply rely on ‘name recognition.’ They choose the first alternative that they recognize … in many realistic choices and judgments the ‘fast and frugal’ recognition choice heuristic behaves surprisingly well.”

Source: Hastie, Reid & Dawes, Robyn M. (2001). Rational choice in an uncertain world. Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 232-234.

About the Authors:

REID HASTIE

Reid Hastie is a Professor of Behavioral Science on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business in the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are in the areas of judgment and decision making (legal, managerial, medical, engineering, and personal), memory and cognition, and social psychology. He is best known for his research on legal decision making (Social Psychology in Court [with Michael Saks]; Inside the Jury [with Steven Penrod and Nancy Pennington]; and Inside the Juror [edited]) and on social memory and judgment processes (Person Memory: The Cognitive Basis of Social Perception [several co-authors]). Currently he is studying: the role of explanations in category concept representations (including the effects on category classification, deductive, and inductive inferences); civil jury decision making; the role of frequency information in probability judgments; and the psychology of reading statistical graphs and maps.

Reid Hastie vita

ROBYN M. DAWES

Robyn Dawes is the Charles J. Queenan, Jr. University Professor Ph.D.: University of Michigan Department Member Since: 1985 at the Department of Social & Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests spans five areas: intuitive expertise, human cooperation, retrospective memory, methodology and United States AIDS policy. He states, “I write journal articles and books because I believe the information they contain could be valuable — at least on a “perhaps, maybe” basis. I have never written anything with the expectation that it will sell, or become a “citation classic” (although one of my articles has). I believe that in American culture we are obsessed with outcomes rather than with behaving in ways that tend to bring about the best expected outcomes, while “time and chance” play a very important role. […] Some of my clinical colleagues claim that feelings are not understood until they can be put into words. My own view is that every translation of a feeling, thought, idea or mathematical form into words involves at least a small element of automatic distortion, often a much larger element.”

POLITIMETRICS

Lionel Page (University of Westminster), in conjunction with Paul Antoine Chevalier (Paris School of Economics), Dan Goldstein (London Business School & Decision Science News), Leighton Vaughan Williams (Nottingham Trent University), and Peter Urwin (University of Westminster) are pleased to bring you Politimetrics.com a Web site that uses prediction markets to forecast election outcomes and more.

What candidate would have the highest probability to win the presidential election if nominated?

What candidate has the program which is more likely to foster growth, reduce unemployment and crime?

All these crucial questions for the voters in this 2008 US election cannot be answered using traditional polls. Using prediction markets in a innovative way, the website Politimetrics.com proposes answers to these questions.

Politimetrics.com presents the estimation of the the conditional probability of success of each candidate if nominated/elected. The numbers are estimated in real time, directly from the prices on specific Intrade contracts.

At this stage of the primary campaign, politimetrics proposes the best answer available the question: “who are the candidates the most likely to win the presidential election if nominated?” Later on in the campaign, we plan to present an even more interesting answer: “which candidate would be the most successful president on a list of issues?” To do so, we have proposed to Intrade a series of specific contracts (listed under the section “Impact of Next President” on their website). Eventually, we hope to be able to answer to questions like:

Is Hilary Clinton more likely to be more effective in managing the economy than John McCain?

Is Mitt Romney more likely to decrease crime than Barack Obama?

SIMPLE WAYS TO DETECT AND COMMUNICATE STATISTICAL EFFECTS

Decision Science News is fond of heuristics and the Simonian view that for many problems organisms face, optimization is a fiction and satisficing makes us smart. Statistics is an area in which it is easy to see precision that isn’t there and find “optima” in problems that lack them. It can be refreshing to look at a problem in a simplified form to get a feeling for what is going on before obsessing over insignificant digits.

Andrew Gelman is previewing a few working papers on rules of thumb that make it easy to detect and communicate statistical effects. “Recommended reading,” says Decision Science News, quoting itself.

Mini Talk on Simple Statistical Methods

Splitting a predictor at the upper quarter or third and the lower quarter or third

Scaling regression inputs by dividing by two standard deviations

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=327299636