Decision Science News

WHARTON / BROWN / CORNELL / PRINCETON / HARVARD HIRING

If you like ivy and decision-making, it may be a good time to dust off your CV. Decision Science News has new announcements from Wharton and Brown this week, and links to previous posts at Cornell, Princeton, and Harvard.

I. Wharton

The OPIM Department at the Wharton School is home to faculty with a diverse set of interests in decision-making, information technology, information strategy, operations management, and operations research. We are seeking applications for tenure-track positions starting in the 2008-2009 academic year.

Applicants must have the potential for excellence in research and teaching in the OPIM Department’s areas of concern. Rank is open. Ph.D. is required.

Applications consisting of PDF files with
(i) a one-page cover letter
(ii) a resume or CV
(iii) at least one research paper
(iv) three contacts for letters of recommendation
(v) a list of any upcoming conferences at which you plan to present your work
should be entered at http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/home/recruiting.html

The department will begin reviewing applications on November 15, 2007. To ensure full consideration, materials should be received by November 15th, but applications will continue to be reviewed until appointments are made.

The University of Pennsylvania is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities, females, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply.

II. Brown

SENIOR POSITIONS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN MEMORY/ATTENTION
Department of Psychology, Brown University

The Department of Psychology at Brown University anticipates making
several new hires over the next three years to develop areas of
strength in Social Psychology and Human Memory/Attention. As the
first step in this effort, the Department is currently seeking Senior
Level (Associate or Full Professor) applicants for positions in each
of these areas.

For the social psychology position, we are particularly interested in
applicants whose research interests focus on social cognition and
whose work makes contact with one or more of the following areas:
judgment and decision making, evolutionary psychology and ecological
bases for social reasoning, game theory and strategic interaction.
Applications should be submitted to Prof. Joachim Krueger, Chair of
the Social Psychology Search Committee.

The research focus for the human memory/attention position is open,
and applicants utilizing purely behavioral, computational, or
cognitive neuroscience (e.g., EEG, fMRI) approaches will all be
considered. Applications should be submitted to Prof. William
Heindel, Chair of the Human Memory/Attention Search Committee.

Brown has a highly interactive research environment in the behavioral
and brain sciences, including the Department of Cognitive &
Linguistic Sciences, the multidisciplinary Brain Science Program, and
the new neuroimaging facility. We expect successful candidates for
both positions to have proven records of (1) excellence in research,
(2) the ability to obtain research funding, and (3) contributions to
undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentoring. Interested
applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, copies of reprints and
preprints of publications, a statement of research and teaching
interests, and the names of five referees to the Chair of the
appropriate search committee, Department of Psychology, Brown
University, Box 1853, Providence RI 02912. Applications received by
December 15, 2007 will receive full consideration. Brown University
is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Minorities and
women are especially encouraged to apply.

III. Several Cornell jobs are advertised in the current SJDM newsletter.

IV. The Princeton post on Decision Science News

V. The Harvard post on Decision Science News

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1527452820&size=m

READ TEXT FILES, RUN MODELS

The Decision Science News R video tutorials continue with number 2. (If you missed that last one, you will want to watch R Video Tutorial Number 1 first.) The Goldstein pedometer dataset can be downloaded from http://www.dangoldstein.com/flash/Rtutorial2/pedometer.csv

High Res Version: http://www.dangoldstein.com/flash/Rtutorial2/Rtutorial2.html

Topics covered this week include:

• Tricking R into starting in your working directory
• Reading in text files
• Accessing columns in data frames
• Creating histograms
• Side effects and optional parameters of function calls
• Fitting simple linear models
• Adding least-squares and loess lines to plots

The commands in the tutorial are:

myData=read.table("pedometer.csv", header=TRUE, sep=",")
x=hist(myData$Steps,col="lightblue")
x=hist(myData$Steps,breaks=20,col="lightblue")
plot(myData$Steps ~ myData$Observation,col="blue")
myModel=lm(myData$Steps ~ myData$Observation)
summary(myModel)
lines(fitted(myModel))
lines(fitted(loess(myModel)),col="red")


Can’t view flash? Download movie If you see no image under Windows, download the TSSC Codec.

LEARN R BY JUST WATCHING

For this week, Decision Science News has created a video tutorial on how to get started using the R Language for Statistical Computing. (The tutorial is best viewed in your browser’s full-screen mode, try pressing F11 in Windows). R is free and open source, and constantly being improved upon by countless contributors worldwide. DSN highly recommends using R.

Hi Res Version at: http://www.dangoldstein.com/flash/Rtutorial1/Rtutorial1.html

Topics covered include:

• Downloading and installing R in Windows
• The R graphical user interface
• Viewing the graphics demo
• Vectors and basic stats
• Simple plotting

The commands in the tutorial are:
demo(graphics)
x=c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
y=c(10,14,20,18,16,15,10)
x+y
z=c(x,y)
sum(y)
mean(y)
sd(y)
plot(x,y)
barplot(y,col=”lightgreen”)

Got that? Now try R video tutorial 2
See also The R Graph Gallery
Can’t view flash? Download movie. If you see no image under Windows, download the TSSC Codec.

THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE

Decision Science News, the new Economics of Behaviour and Decision-Making Seminar, and the London Business School Centre for Marketing invite you to an Evening Seminar on:

“The Impact of the Highly Improbable”

with Nassim Nicholas Taleb
(Visiting Professor, London Business School)

At this evening seminar, we are delighted to welcome Nassim Taleb who will be discussing the impact of the highly improbable. In this seminar he presents the role of the rare events across history, the arts, technology, and business and economic life. He discusses the psychological processes and biases that causes us to misunderstand them: retrospective distortion, silent evidence, narrative fallacy, as well as the scientific errors leading to the underestimation of the role of these events. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist, applied statistician, and veteran “quant”/ trader focusing on the multidisciplinary aspects of high-impact rare events (“Black Swans”). Taleb is the author of the NYT Bestseller The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Random House and London: Penguin (2007), as well as Fooled By Randomness (2005, 2001) and Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options, J. Wiley (1997).

Date: Monday 24th September 2007
Venue: London Business School Lecture Theatre 1
Registration: 17:00 Seminar: 17:30 – 19:00
Followed by a drinks reception

NOTE: This talk is “sold out”, but we can accept 20 more people on the list because of a predictable percentage of no-shows. People on the waiting list will be emailed if there is still room.

HOW TO JOIN THE EMAIL LIST: To subscribe to the seminar series email list, please visit http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=1061080&loc=en_US
to opt in. You can easily unsubscribe anytime. Pass this message on to those interested in joining the mailing list.

The full schedule of talks at the Economics of Behaviour and Decision Making seminar series is maintained at http://www.decisionresearchlab.com/ebdm/

Lionel Page (Westminster Business School)
Dan Goldstein (London Business School)

DATA GEEKS REJOICE

DSN recommends this workshop for decision researchers interested in the making the most of the rich social data that is increasingly available online.

This workshop addresses a new online phenomenon: social data analysis, that is, collective analysis of data supported by social interaction.

In the last few months a new class of web site has emerged that enables users to upload and collectively analyze many types of data. These systems range from pure research projects to commercial business ventures. Sites like Many Eyes, Swivel and Data360 have attracted visualization fans, data geeks, journalists, scientists, and concerned citizens. The blogosphere has also taken notice, and bloggers frequently post about the ways in which they use these sites, the visualizations they create, and the data they upload.

The goals of this workshop are to:

1) Bring together, for the first time, the social data analysis community
2) Examine the design of social data analysis sites today
3) Discuss the role that visualizations play in social data analysis
4) Explore how users are utilizing the various sites that allow them to exchange data-based insights.

We seek researchers and practitioners whose work explores social data analysis and/or social uses of visualizations. We hope for a lively mix of people actively involved in building sites and academics who study the dynamics of social software.

Submitting:
Individuals interested in participating should submit a 2-4 page position paper describing experience with a social data analysis initiative, a proposed initiative, or an analysis of an issue of importance in this area.

Submission deadline: October 3, 2007

Papers should conform to the CHI 2008 Extended Abstracts format and should be emailed to:

social-data-analysis at lists.berkeley.edu

PDF of call for participation

JOINT APPOINTMENT IN PSYCH AND PUBLIC POLICY @ PRINCETON

Princeton’s campus is easy on the eyes and Princeton’s psych department is easily among the best. You, dear reader, might be the policy-relevant psychologist they are looking for.

Princeton University’s Department of Psychology anticipates making an appointment at the associate or full professor level. The position will be a joint appointment between the Psychology Department and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (WWS), as part of an expanding joint venture in psychology and public policy. The candidate will teach some psychology courses and some courses that explore the links between psychology and public policy. Social psychologists with an interest in policy-relevant topics, including health and well-being, and cognitive psychologists specializing in judgment and decision making are invited to apply.

All applicants must have an active research program and demonstrated commitment to teaching and advising at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels. They should also be interested in interacting with neighboring social science disciplines (such as economics or politics).

Applicants should submit a c.v. with a cover letter summarizing their qualifications and names of three senior researchers who would be prepared to write letters on their behalf to: Search Committee SOC/JDM/WWS, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Green Hall, Princeton, NJ 08540-1010. Applicants should submit materials as soon as possible; the search will remain open until the position is filled. Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. For information about applying to Princeton and how to self-identify, please link to http://web.princeton.edu/sites/dof/ApplicantsInfo.htm

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1306273779

A NEW MEDICAL DECISION MAKING BLOG

Alan Schwartz of the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine has started a new blog in advance of his forthcoming book “Making Medical Decisions: A Physician’s Guide” by himself and George Bergus (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Visit the blog at Making Medical Decisions.

Today, we quote an example of the quality content you will find there. It’s on swing weighting (see Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research, by Detlov von Winterfeldt and Ward Edwards, for more)

“To use swing weighting with a set of goals and a set of treatment outcomes, you determine from the patient, how each treatment outcome would impact each of their goals.

For example, if a patient has three goals:

• Live as long as possible
• Continue working at my job
• Keep my family financially secure

and is considering three treatments (A, B, and no treatment) with known outcomes, they might perceive the situation to look like this:

To determine the relative importance of their three goals, we ask which goal could result in the most important swing from worst possible achievement of that goal to best possible achievement. That is, if the patient were the worst possible scenario (no more than two years to live, unable to work for months, and sufficient insurance coverage), which one goal’s outcome would they want to swing to the best possible achievement? Would they prefer to improve their longevity (from “no more than 2 years” to “5+ years”), their ability to work (from “unable to work for months” to “immediately resume work”), or their financial security (from “sufficient coverage” to “sufficient coverage”)? If the patient prefers to swing Goal 1, that is considered her most important goal, and she can then proceed to choose which goal she would next choose to swing, out of those that remain”.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1239529607

THE INFLUENCE OF CEILING HEIGHT

DSN reports from Warsaw this week, where the SPUDM (Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making) conference is wrapping up. Much knowledge was exchanged on the last day in a symposium on experience-based decisions.

In other news, always watching the journals for articles that are about to make a splash in the popular press, Decision Science News has identified this one from the latest Journal of Consumer Research.

The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use

Authors: Joan Meyers-Levy & Rui (Juliet) Zhu

Abstract: This article demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can prime concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. We theorized that when reasonably salient, a high versus low ceiling can prime the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. These concepts, in turn, can prompt consumers’ use of predominately relational versus item-specific processing. Three studies found support for this theorizing. On a variety of measures, ceiling height–induced relational or item-specific processing was indicated by people’s reliance on integrated and abstract versus discrete and concrete ideation. Hence, this research sheds light on when and how ceiling height can affect consumers’ responses.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1069909110

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 at the Journal of Consumer Research are now making public what they call teaching sets(*), which are simply manuscripts and their accompanying reviews and revisions published for all to see:

http://ejcr.org/teaching-sets/teachingsets.html

While JCR’s idea is to “to make it easier for professors and their students/advisees to discuss the review process” (**), DSN thinks that opening up reviews in this way has an added benefit: it gives the world a privileged view into what a sample of informed readers really think. Do this long enough and we might approach something like scientific communication and advancement.

ADDENDUM:
In chatting with JCR after making this post, DSN has discovered that they too are not crazy about the name “teaching sets”. DSN is hereby soliciting better names for these things, which it will pass on to JCR. Some ideas:

Public Reviews
Open Reviews
Reviews Made Public
Declassified Reviews
Review Process Histories
Review Process Paper Trails
{your idea here}

Send your creative genius to dan at dangoldstein.com

(*) Decision Science News does not like the name “teaching sets”
(**) Personal communcation
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=513246074&size=m

A FEW DAYS LEFT: SCP 2008 NEW ORLEANS DEADLINE EXTENDED

Consumer psychologists and budding consumer psychologists will be happy to know that the deadline for the Society for Consumer Psychology 2008 conference has extended its deadline until Thursday, August 9th, 2007. It’s not much time, but it’s time enough.

Previous Decision Science News post on SCP 2008.