Book Description
This classic text, first published in 1971, has introduced tens of thousands of students to sound reasoning using a wealth of current, relevant, and stimulating examples all put together and explained in Howard Kahane's uniquely witty and invigorating writing style. Long the choice of instructors who want to "keep students interested", LOGIC AND CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC combines examples from TV, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and, in typical Kahanian fashion, our nation¹s political dialogue. The text not only brings the concepts alive for students, but puts critical thinking skills into a context that students will retain and use throughout their lives. This is a book you can actually count on students to read.
Book Description
How Doctors Think defines the nature and importance of clinical judgment. Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science but rather an interpretive practice that relies on clinical reasoning. A physician looks at the patient's history along with the presenting physical signs and symptoms and juxtaposes these with clinical experience and empirical studies to construct a tentative account of the illness. How Doctors Think is divided into four parts. Part one introduces the concept of medicine as a practice rather than a science; part two discusses the idea of causation; part three delves into the process of forming clinical judgment; and part four considers clinical judgment within the uncertain nature of medicine itself. In How Doctors Think, Montgomery contends that assuming medicine is strictly a science can have adverse side effects, and suggests reducing these by recognizing the vital role of clinical judgment.
Customer Reviews:
An extraordinary book, and right on time.......2007-07-31
There are two books with this same title, "How Doctors Think," that have arrived at more or less the same time. Dr Groopman's book will sell more copies, and is a useful book for building competence for managing both sides of the doctor-patient interaction. This book is something different. It is a historic milestone that offers extraordinary help to those who are committed to guiding the medical professions in shifting their orientations and competences for the challenges facing them. It arrives at the right moment, in that to effectively address these challenges will require new understandings of what doctors are and do, how they become what they are and how they are trained to do what they do. I am grateful that Ms. Montgomery has published it.
Fantastic and challenging.......2007-07-09
This is a fantastic book -- it is much more advanced than Groopman's book, and is probably aimed at a different audience. Groopman addresses the layperson, while Montogomery addresses issues and ideas that the average reader would have trouble with. She is a great writer, though, and this is well worth your time.
Brilliant.......2007-01-19
I was thrilled when I first began reading How Doctors Think, and my feelings did not change when I finally finished the last page of the book. In honest,lyrical prose, Kathryn Montgomery eloquently articulates the complicated tapestry of the clinical decision-making process physicians often encounter in the face of clinical uncertainties and probabilistic medicine. Kudos to a beautifully structured deconstruction of the culture of medicine and medical training! I highly recommend this book to those involved in medical education curricular development. For those who are already medical students, residents, fellows, and attending physicians, I would suggest this as a must-read book on your reading list.
A Masterpiece!!!!.......2007-01-03
K Montgomery's book is the culmination of many years of working with physicians trying to dissect their way of reaching a complex diagnosis. She has an exceptional hability to put in words what takes 20 years of medical practice. Her concept of medicine not as science but a progressive growth based on experience ( memory of previous encounters with thousands of patients) and...science + new developments is simply revolutionary. Practical reasoning is the essence of how doctors think in the practice of medicine!!!!! This is one of the best books I ever read. I recommend HIGHLY
Daniel Sette Camara, MD,FACP,FACG, FASGE
How Doctors Think.......2006-07-03
The best overview of physician thought processes I have read. Well written;thorough; should help non-medical persons understand the challenges physicians face in the diagnostic process and is an excellent guide for physicians who wish to organize and improve there clinical judgment. An MD
Book Description
Most people would be left destitute if they planned their futures as carelessly as theyve prepared for eternity. Drawing on the principles in 2 Corinthians 5:911, John Bevere reminds us that all believers will stand before God and receive what they have earned in life. In building their lives to be ready for that day, and maintaining an eternal frame of reference, readers will develop significant lives. In keeping sight of the goal, readers will learn to labor for rewards that endurefor timeless eternity.
Customer Reviews:
Driven by Eternity.......2007-10-05
This book is awesome!! It is a MUST read for anyone wishing to get closer to God. The video study series is absolutely the ultimate. I would recommend this series to anyone.
Driven By Eternity.......2007-08-05
This is an eye opening book. It is not only well written, but it hits home on a topic that many people today need to reevaluate.
I loved it and recommend it highly.
A must for anyone desiring to mature as a Christian.......2007-07-23
Before I read the book I heard Brother Bevere preaching. I then bought a set that included this book, the CD's for "Affabel" as well as video presentation and one of his novels. I was impacted by his message from the beggining.
The whole subject of this book is that our present life is nothing when compared with eternity. Based on this premised, we must do our best on this life to first, to be save, and second, to ensure that we secure the rewards that God has for us in his Kingdom.
These rewards are not just "spiritual" but real they are promised in the Scripture. Bevere starts his book by presenting the allegory of the Kingdom of Affabel, which he uses as an allegory of this life and the coming Kingdom of Christ. The characters of the story represent various forms on which people approach the Christian faith, both voirtous and others fallacious as they do not adhere to the Scripture. At the en of the allegory the chareacters face King Jalyl, and receive what they deserve for how they lived their lifes.
Bevere goes on and makes a case for how most of Christians -and obviously those who are not- waste most of their lives building and working on things that are not of etenrnal significance. By using the Affabel allegory and using the holy Bible to support his teachings, Brother Bevere demonstrates what the Bible says about eternity, how people are actually living it, and how really we should see it. He also tell us what God expect from us and the benefits of us following His Will and Plan.
I found this book life changing. I recommend this book to anybody and everybody, whether you are a believer or not. If you are a believer, you will shape up and start to put something in your "account" with God, otherwise all your hard work will be gone when tested by God's purifying fire. If you are not a Christian, well, you need to "open" an account, becasue otherwise everything there will be nothing left for you, other than eternal punishment.
Very impressive - with one MAJOR flaw.......2007-07-21
There is a lot to recommend in this book. Bevere makes a compelling case for filtering all of one's thoughts, words and actions through the light of eternity. Good stuff! And he writes better than most. Why just three stars, then? For a major doctrinal flaw. Bevere devotes one entire chapter to his conviction that it is possible to lose one's salvation by one's actions. His "proof" of this contention is utterly unconvincing, as any teaching outside Christian orothodoxy would be. I was flabbergasted - if he's wrong about this, what else is in error? It's difficult to recommend for this reason alone. The book with the offending chapter excised would be worth five stars, easily.
EXCELLENT 5 STAR BOOK.......2007-07-20
John Bevere earns nothing but praises- this may be his best book yet. If you are looking for some "meat" to chew on, once again John Bevere provides it in this AWESOME book. You cant put the book down- A must for
every serious Christians library.
Book Description
With more than 500,000 copies of her books in print in the United States, Donna Leon continues to find new fans for her riveting Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries. In Death and Judgment, a truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on a treacherous road in the Italian Dolomite mountains. Meanwhile, in Santa Lucia, a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboard an intercity train. Suspecting a connection between the two tragedies, Brunetti digs deep for an answer, stumbling upon a seedy Venetian bar that holds the key to a crime network that reaches far beyond the laguna. But it will take another violent death in Venice before Brunetti and his colleagues begin to understand what is really going on.
Customer Reviews:
Another Leon winner.......2007-09-14
Whether you are a Donna Leon fan or not, this Inspector Brunetti mystery is in the true Leon genre, insightful of the lovable but often corruptible Venetian, and in essence, Italian culture. She weaves a plot line full of intrigue and possible evildoers, along with the usual and colorful suspects....his wife, children, Vianello, Patta, Scarpa and the delightful Signorina Elettra. In this particular story, one of the many existing problems that goes hand in hand with illegal immigration, is the problem of 'kidnapping' foreign women from troubled and often impoverished countries and bringing them into Italy and forcing them into prostitution for survival. Inspector Brunetti is a master of solving these dilemnas and keeping the peace among the less than moral administrators to whom he must report. Leon tells a story that goes beyond the plotline and reveals some of the essence of contemporary Italian society.
As a lover of Italian life and culture, Donna Leon's novels do not diminish this passion, but do ring home some of the problems in current Italian life and underscore exisiting problems throughout Europe and the fast changing world we live in.
A Brutal Existential Look at Ethics.......2007-09-13
Please be aware that this book also appeared under the title of A Venetian Reckoning. If you are trying to read the whole series, read one or the other. This is the fourth novel in the Guido Brunetti series of mysteries.
As the book opens, it's late September and a Rumanian truck carrying lumber plunges off the road and into a rock face to open up a grisly scene of crushed and broken young women amid scattered pine boards. Paolo, Guido's wife, notes the story where it remains tucked in her memory until it can provide a critical clue.
The scene shifts to late November when prominent international lawyer Carlo Trevisan is found murdered on a late night train to Venice, where Trevisan lived. Vice-Questore Patta is annoyed that he had been called to the scene when Brunetti could not be reached. The mayor of Venice quickly calls the next morning to ask for a quick and quiet solution. Since there's no evidence of robbery, Brunetti must probe into motives. Who didn't like Trevisan?
Brunetti gets a quick leg up when Signorina Elletra's sister agrees to share information about the wife and daughter of the murdered man, who had been patients. When the crime comes up for discussion at home, Brunetti's daughter, Chiara, says she knows the daughter and agrees to ask around a bit.
When Chiara turns out to be good at snooping through gossiping with friends, there's a major confrontation in the Brunetti household concerning the ethics of such undercover methods employing a minor.
The case becomes more clouded when a successful accountant is found dead of an apparent suicide, but leaving behind the telephone number of the dead attorney in his address book. When the numbers are matched up with the records of the attorney's calling, they show a disturbing pattern . . . including many international calls and to a bar where the ladies rent by the hour in a rough part of town.
Trevisan's widow and her brother seem determined to shut off the police investigation. Frustrated that he's getting nowhere, Brunetti calls in a favor for a judge who tells him more about the background of the attorney and his family. Tracking through a tangled series of clues, the case takes one more twisted turn when the widow's brother is also killed.
The case breaks open quite suddenly when an unexpected clue is dropped into Brunetti's lap. From there, it's a question of how to accomplish justice. But is there any justice other than God's? You may be reminded of the myth of Sisyphus as you contemplate the ending of this existential look at the human condition.
For those who like action and mysteries evolving in ways that they can solve just ahead of the author's revelations, Death and Judgment will be a disappointment. But for those who enjoy tough ethical questions, this is a very fine book. In either case, the book's primary limitation is Ms. Leon's customary dark view of human nature. In this book, she goes about as far as you can go and still slightly separate humans from vicious, uncaring predators.
Not her best.......2007-05-19
I'm a big fan of mysteries and Donna Leon, but this particular book moved too slowly. I lost interest.
Bravo for Brunetti!.......2007-05-06
This is my first Donna Leon mystery and my first introduction to Brunetti. It won't be my last. Brunetti provides us with a disarming if somewhat ambling policeman working against the backdrop of beautiful Venice, brought to rich atmospheric life skillfully through Leon's writing.
I'm not certain why it's published under 2 different names and I didn't feel that Death and Judgment exactly captured the essence of this caper. Nevertheless, it was a good solid read with a charming protagonist, complex plot and multi-dimensional characters. Nicely cadenced, graceful and accomplished, with a plot that juxtaposes the ugliness of crime against the corruption of some of Italy's elite. I'll be back for more of Leon's Brunetti novels.
Death and Judgement Review.......2007-03-08
Being a Donna Leon fan, I was a little disappointed in the ending as it seemed abrupt. It left me with a feeling
of the characters and story not being resolved or elaborated on which this author doesn't usually do.
Average customer rating:
- Good
- Roarke and Eve are at it again!
- Page Turner!!
- Wonderfully plotted and well thought out!
- A little lackluster
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Judgment in Death (In Death)
J.D. Robb , and
Nora Roberts
Manufacturer: Berkley
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Witness in Death (In Death)
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Loyalty in Death (In Death)
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Seduction in Death (In Death)
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Holiday in Death (In Death)
ASIN: 0425176304
Release Date: 2004-04-06 |
Book Description
When a cop killer cuts loose in a club called Purgatory, Detective Eve Dallas descends into an underground criminal hell.
Download Description
Eve Dallas enters into an investigation that uncovers a private strip club that's more than an uptown hot spot.
Customer Reviews:
Good.......2007-07-19
Nora Roberts Rocks! Lt. Eve Dallas makes the best protagonist and it's like a ongoing series so there is always a new story!
Roarke and Eve are at it again!.......2007-07-11
An off-duty cop has been killed in Roarke's Club, Purgatory, and as Eve unravels the mystery, not only does she find bad cops, but one of Roarke's oldest and deadliest enemies, Max Ricker. Ricker wants to destroy Roarke and what better way then using Eve. And as the story unfolds, the body count rises as more cops turn up dead, but why? Is it a vendetta or something more sinister? You won't be necessarily surprised, but you will love the character and plot development.
On top of everything else, while trying to solve the murder, Eve begins to have memories about her childhood, and realizes that Max Ricker has ties to her disturbing past. She is extremely surprised to find that Roarke's oldest enemy probably knew what her father was doing to her in Dallas, and made no attempts to stop him. (In later installments, you find that Roarke and Eve's lives were intertwined long before they met, since childhood. Both of their fathers knew each other and were involved in criminal enterprises. So, it would seem that Roarke and Eve were destined to be together.)
In summary, I think this novel is one of my favorites in the series. Not only did we see Roarke "lose his cool", but we get to see how he feels about the appearance of Eve's past lover, Webster (an internal affairs detective who appears to know more than he is willing to say). I think it was nice to see Roarke "off stride" for a change. I will also say that one disadvantage for me is that I am not reading the series in order, so I am not sure if what I am about to say is relevant. What I would have like to read is a story about how Ricker's son (who was mentioned a lot) handles the fact that Eve and Roarke stopped his lunatic father? I think that would be a wonderful story and an interesting villian in a future story.
Page Turner!!.......2007-06-13
I've read all of Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb's books and this is one of my favorites for the In Death Series. If you haven't read any of them I would suggest you start at the beggining (Naked in Death) and make your way from there. I'm sure you won't be able to get enough. All the books are absolutely amazing and you just fall in love with Eve and Roarke and everything they go through together.
Wonderfully plotted and well thought out!.......2007-04-05
A stale plot is made masterfully refreshing in the hands of one of the greatest writers to ever put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard as the case may be).
Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb) takes the tale of "cop killers" to new heights of suspense in the futuristic Eve Dallas series. Readers are taken on a journey into an imagination as vivid and lively as any Walt Disney movie. The difference, of course, being that Walt Disney only killed the parents of cartoon animals whereas Robb expertly tackles a more real world (if futuristic) human death. The imaginative effect is nonetheless incredible!
A little lackluster.......2006-08-28
I'm a huge fan of this series, but I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as the others. I have to agree with another reviewer that said that the identification of the killer was so abrupt that it almost left me wondering if I missed some pages or something. I think that Roarke's behavior in this book became a little annoying. And I did not like the angry sex scene in this book. These two are always so loving with each other that it seems way too out of the ordinary. It's also starting to wear on me that Roarke has his nose in every little thing that Eve does. Give me a break! He should be more of a peripheral character than being thrust into the middle of every mystery.
Customer Reviews:
Not the Full Monty........2007-10-08
My main interest in this subject lies in a search for answers to the question of why perfectly sane and intelligent people put faith in God above reasoning. Why do so many choose to believe so strongly with so little evidence? Unfortunately Thomas Gilovich absolutely refuses to cast light on religious delusions, but mainly states that theists and atheist "both need to develop the habit of thinking more broadly." Not helpful at all and sort of a faux pas to include this lame comment in the book.
Never the less, the book is a good and thorough introduction to the subject of our penchant for faulty reasoning, but also somewhat dry and repetitive. I wasn't exactly rolling on the floor with laughter, which might be too much to ask; but the many examples and anecdotes could be presented with greater vigour without harming the seriousness and validity of the study.
May I recommend: "Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking" by Thomas E. Kida, which is very similar in content and reference a lot of the same sources, but is also more playful and entertaining.
Vulcans Should Read This Book.......2007-06-02
Hello, my name is Mr. Spock. You may know me from the TV series StarTrek. For years I've been tormented by the illogic of humans. Let's face it, Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy are not the sharpest phasers in the intergalactic utility belt!
Then I read Gilovich's book. It helped me realize that humans are most illogical in times of uncertainty when there is no clear trend and not enough information upon which to make a good decision. In such cases, especially when a decision must be made, logic is not going to be of much help. As a result, people develop simple, but often inaccurate, theories to help them through painful states of indecision. The decision may be good or not, but at least a decision has been made, and that alone provides comfort.
Unfortunately, humans also have a strong desire to justify their theories, and this is where they get into trouble. Data that proves the theory is retained and emphasized, and data that doesn't is heavily discounted. So the theory takes on a life of its own despite the facts, which admittedly may themselves be ambiguous at times.
The bottom line is that this book gave me a greater understanding of humans. As a result, I feel more comfortable communicating with them, and just being around them in general. If you're part Vulcan like I am, or even a logical human, I strongly suggest you read this excellent book about human thinking and decision making. You won't be sorry. Live long and prosper!
Mr. Scot, I have completed my Amazon review, and have obtained the Chinese food and pornography magazines the Captain has requested. Please beam me up now.
Question your assumptions and challenge what you think you know.......2006-08-24
This book provides a well-organized survey of issues that limit our reasoning abilities:
- Our misperception of random events, as in the "clustering illusions" that lead us to believe in the hot hand, for example.
- Our misunderstanding of statistical regression, which, for instance, affects our perception of the roles of reward and punishment in education.
- Our tendency to seek confirmatory information, as in the justification of our choices.
- Our inability to see what could have happened under different circumstances, as in self-fulfilling prophecies (e.g. a negative first impression or the presumed insolvency of a financial institution).
- Our own biases that make us expose inconsistent information to more critical scrutiny than consistent information.
- Asymmetries that distort what we recall and, thus, what we take into account to evaluate the validity of beliefs (as in multiple endpoints situations or one-sided events).
- Our tendency to believe what we want to believe (specially about ourselves), as if beliefs were possessions.
- The distortions present in secondhand information (a.k.a. sharpening and leveling).
- The influence of what we think others believe (and also of the inadequate feedback we often receive about that).
These limitations make us draw incorrect conclusions and bolster erroneous beliefs. Being aware of them helps us in distinguishing what we know well from what we only think is true. Just this is of utmost importance for thinking clearly. Could there be a better reason for reading this book?
Should Have Been Better Than It Was.......2006-07-29
Gilovich starts this book of with a real bang! After reading the Introduction, I thought this book would be really interesting and change the way I look at the world. He writes in a college-teacher tone that will not be approachable to those he most needs to reach. In other words, I really don't need a book to tell me to avoid holistic cretins, ESP, psychics, mysticism, and all that other garbage.
The first half of his book is concerned with a review of the psychology literature from the '70s and '80s on how people arrive at their beliefs. This is boring and somewhat like a set of lecture notes. The information in it is useful, but it could be summarized and edited. The second half of the book is devoted to why people shouldn't believe in the topics I mentioned above. Most people who read his book wouldn't even dream of subscribing to these beliefs, so the whole second half is pretty boring.
Gilovich finishes the book by telling us that psychologists are best at understanding the world and are the most perceptive professionals out there, bar none. While admitting that the core thought processes that lead to logical decision making come from hard science, Gilovich wants us to believe that the softies have perfected clear thinking about the world. He should have reread that portion of the book when he wasn't overheated and realized how silly it would sound to attorneys, physicians, scientists, and other thoughtful people.
Required for all psychology students!!!.......2006-06-21
This book is a contemporary classic that should be required reading in all psychology programs. As a psychologist, I am regularly appalled by how few trained psychologists know of the research discussed in this book, indeed, of decision science in general!! It only goes to show, there's scientific psychology (of which this book qualifies), and then, well, there's the other 99%...the crap, fluff, unsupported, unscientific, claims and practices that arise out of pseudo-scientific approaches, misinterpretations of data, and fallacious assumptions and conclusions. As an exemplar of what's good in a field rife with methodological manure and hocus pocus B.S. (e.g. psychotherapy, psychiatry, etc.), this book really shines. Read it and discover why some of psychology really is a science.
Average customer rating:
- Not a book about the wine, but a book about the passion for making, tasting, and drinking wine
- Fun Book
- The real magic in wine making:
- A Delicious Read!
- A very good book....
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Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine
George M. Taber
Manufacturer: Scribner
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ASIN: 0743247515 |
Book Description
Told for the first time by the only reporter present, this is the true story of the legendary Paris Tasting of 1976 -- a blind tasting where French judges shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France's best -- and its revolutionary impact on the world of wine.
The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History houses, amid its illustrious artifacts, two bottles of wine: a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. These are the wines that won at the now-famous Paris Tasting in 1976, where a panel of top French wine experts compared some of France's most famous wines with a new generation of California wines. Little did they know the wine industry would be completely transformed as a result, sparking a golden age for viticulture that extends beyond France's hallowed borders -- to Australia, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand, and across the globe.
Then Paris correspondent for Time magazine, George M. Taber recounts this seminal contest and its far-reaching effects, focusing on the three gifted unknowns behind the winning wines: a college lecturer, a real estate lawyer, and a Yugoslavian immigrant. At a time when California was best known for cheap jug wine, these pioneers used radical new techniques alongside time-honored winemaking traditions to craft premium American wines that could stand up to France's finest.
With unique access to the main players and a contagious passion for his subject, Taber renders this historic event and its tremendous aftershocks in captivating prose, bringing to life an eclectic cast and magnificent settings. For lovers of wine and anyone who enjoys a story of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world conquering the old, this is an illuminating and deeply satisfying tale.
Customer Reviews:
Not a book about the wine, but a book about the passion for making, tasting, and drinking wine.......2007-09-26
Author George Taber is not a wine grower, producer, bottler, seller, or apologist. His connection to the main story in this book, the build up to a classic tasting competition in France of California wines against French wines, was that he was the only journalist to show up for the wine tasting. He wrote for Time Magazine, and Taber said he'd "...try to get there, without promising anything" (p. 163).
Ah, Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point was about to occur.
As it turned out, the California wines, both Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, came in first in blind tasting with some very well known French wine judges. It was shocking.... to the judges, the French government, and to the California wineries. They were THAT good?
This is the story of that tasting competition, the wineries involved, the wine makers, and the grape growers. Taber discusses the history of these wines, the history of wine growing regions, and the future of wines. Great wines can be grown outside of France? The cat was out of the bag. New Zealand, Chile, Australia... no longer does France spring to the tip of the tongue when discussing the very best wines.
In The Judgment of Paris, Taber stretches the narrative, so it needed to be more than entertaining... it needed to be educational. Luckily, this book was both.
I recommend it to the budding wine connoisseur! Read this book before visiting either Napa-Sonoma Counties, or France. Better yet, read it before your next visit to your local wine shop.
Fun Book.......2007-07-07
After 30 years of tasting wines in the Napa Valley, I finally found a book that puts all the pieces together. George M. Taber recounts the famous 1976 Paris Tasting in intricate detail...and that may be the smaller story here. In a larger sense, Taber "connects the dots" that are the owners, vineyard farmers, and wine makers who crafted the wine history of this beautiful valley. Sit back with a glass of your favorite wine and savor the passion and persistence that revolutionized the wine industry of California and the world. Cheers!
The real magic in wine making:.......2007-02-06
Mr. Tauber not only demystifies the world of wine to someone who knows little about it, but relates the wonderful story of devotion and hard work that goes into producing a top wine. I do believe that wine tastes better since reading this book.
A Delicious Read!.......2007-02-03
I love California wines. As a Californian I am very proud of my home states history and heritage as the world's premier producer of fine wines. However, it has not always been so. Until quite recently, California wines were not reveared in such an august way. What happened? How did this change in world opinion occur? I have been curious about this mysterious evolution in Californaia wines for quite some time and after a friend suggested Judgment of Paris to me I began to hope that it would be all I had wished for. I was not disappointed. Obviously, I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history and loves premium wine, especially wines produced in California.
The Judgment of Paris is such a tremendous book on many levels. It is full of tender and engaging stories about real people who, against all odds, helped establish California wines amongst the best in the world, culminating with their personal involvement in the now famous 1976 Paris wine tasting competition: The seminal event that turned the world of wine on it's collective head.
This book is also a fabulous review of premier wine making history, not only in California, but worldwide. If your knowledge of wines and wine making is limited or non-existent, you will feel like quite the connoisseur by the time you are finished reading. This is a really fun and informative book. Very well researched and extremely well written.
Cheers! to George Tabor for crafting such a wonderful `book-quet'. ;-)
A very good book...........2006-11-03
This was a very good book. It filled in many of the blanks. However, Taber's proofreader should have been more careful... he/she would have caught Taber's mistake in referring to Jancis Robinson as a he instead of a she. It just goes to show that a non-wine person wrote (and proofed) the book!
Average customer rating:
- Our biases over-ride our rational appraisal. An important volume from Kahneman and Tversky.
- Prospect theory is a subset of Keynes's theory of probability
- my humble opinion
- This is the best book I've ever seen about probability.
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Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521284147 |
Book Description
The thirty-five chapters in this book describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments but in important social, medical, and political situations as well. Individual chapters discuss the representativeness and availability heuristics, problems in judging covariation and control, overconfidence, multistage inference, social perception, medical diagnosis, risk perception, and methods for correcting and improving judgments under uncertainty. About half of the chapters are edited versions of classic articles; the remaining chapters are newly written for this book. Most review multiple studies or entire subareas of research and application rather than describing single experimental studies. This book will be useful to a wide range of students and researchers, as well as to decision makers seeking to gain insight into their judgments and to improve them.
Customer Reviews:
Our biases over-ride our rational appraisal. An important volume from Kahneman and Tversky........2006-01-11
In this volume Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky gathered together 35 authoritative papers that demonstrate through well-designed experiments and through observation the hard-wired biases and heuristics that influence (or define) the way humans go about making choices when the outcomes are from certain.
There are a raft of biases, and just one example is the Anchoring Effect. If you asked 100 people to guess the population of Turkey, what you'd probably get is a wide range of answers. If you broke the question into two parts: first by asking whether the population is higher or lower than 14 million - and then by asking the respondents to guess the population - you'd find that the answers would gravitate around our arbitrary 14 million mark.
The Heuristics we use to weigh up and evaluate data provide a second family of biases. Here, the human brain is shown to go about problem evaluation along certain pathways and shortcuts, and the route we take tends to define where we'll emerge. By way of example, we tend to give undue weight to highly retrievable or available data: and treat this as representative. So in the wake of Katrina, you or I would be fairly excused for judging 2005 as a particularly bad year for global weather-related disasters. In probability, 2005 was not particularly unusual on a global scale.
This volume is an important collection of papers, with relevance to anyone working in fields where decision-making is at the core. You might be in market research, medicine, social sciences, economics or other fields: this book contains material of direct relevance to your work. The conclusions from the papers range from disturbing (the judgments of professional medical and psychological experts, we see, can be alarmingly biased!) through to illuminating.
Just as gamblers feel sure that after throwing six heads in a row, the coin is "overdue" to throw tails (as if coins have a memory) even professionals have an amazing propensity to run roughshod over their own understanding of probability.
This book makes for serious reading and delivers good value. It makes an absorbing, more focused twin-volume with CHOICES, VALUES & FRAMES which I'd say, however, is a more important book that encompasses much of the thinking here. I've take a star off here because some papers are written not in plain English but rather in densely mathematical language. I work in statistics, but our English language is quite adequate for the task of telling the story, isn't it? For this reason readers of this volume will appreciate the incredibly readable, yet hugely informative, volume "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making" by Scott Plous. I refer frequently to both these volumes and find both extremely useful.
Prospect theory is a subset of Keynes's theory of probability.......2005-10-09
The essays contained in this book show convincingly that the standard decision theoretic model taught world wide since the mid 1940's,the subjective expected utility model based on the subjective approach to probability of Ramsey,De Finetti,and Savage,is not supported by the experimental evidence.The essays successfully show how the use of Prospect Theory accounts for the underweighting(subadditive-subproportional) and overweighting(superadditive-superproportional)of decision weights(non linear "probabilities").Three basic judgmental heuristic operations are preformed by decision makers in the real world.These operations are intuitive and based on the perceptions of the decision maker.The first heuristic that decision makers use in making probability evaluations is called representativeness.Judgments of probability are based on what is perceived as similar.The second heuristic is the availability heuristic.It,like the third heuristic,specifies that decision makers concentrate only on that evidence,upon which the probabilities will be estimated,that is most easily obtained or is immediately available.The third heuristic is called the anchoring heuristic.Decision makers use only that evidence that comes first.Tversky and Kahneman,as well as all of the other essay authors,argue that their experimental evidence demonstrates or shows that decision makers do not understand the mathematical laws of probability(additivity of probabilities,addition principle,multiplication principle,marginal probability,conditional probability,joint probability).They also do not understand basic statistical concepts(regression to the mean of a probability distribution). In 1921,in his A Treatise on Probability(TP),J M Keynes pointed out that the purely mathematical conception of probability was a very small subset of what he called the logical theory of probability.In order to apply the purely mathematical laws of probability correctly,a decision maker had to have a complete sample space of all possible outcomes specified in advance.An equivalent assumption is that the decision maker knows for certain what the particular probability distribution is.Secondly,probability preferences would have to be specified by a complete order that was linear or proportional.Any decision situation that did not satisfy these conditions had a weight of evidence less than one.Keynes specified a variable,w,called the weight of the evidence,that measured the completeness of the relevant,potential evidence that was available to the decision maker.It was defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1,just like Ellsberg's rho variable that would serve as a measure of the ambiguity of the evidence.The existence of ambiguity automaticaly will lead to violations of the purely mathematical laws of probability.Contrary to Kahneman and Tversky,Ellsberg,like Keynes before him,argued that these calculations are not erroneous and the decision makers are not irrational or biased.The claims made by Tversky, Kahneman and their many followers(Shiller,for example),that the subjects in their experiments are probabilistically and statistically illiterate,makes no sense because the problems that are presented to the experimental subjects do not allow the subjects to unambiguously define a unique probability distribution or a complete sample space of all possible outcomes(some examples are the blue-green taxi cab problem,the rare Asian disease problem,the battlefield problem,the Linda-bankteller problem,and the lawyer-engineer problem).Let us now turn to the representativeness heuristic.The representativeness heuristic turns out to be none other than Keynes's degree of similarity or likeness or resemblance discussed by Keynes in chapter 3 and Part III of the TP.The anchoring and availability heuristics are identical to the statement that the weight of the evidence is less than 1 for a real world decision maker.Keynes showed that decision makers would usually be able to use interval estimates(upper-lower probabilities) only.You automatically will violate the mathematical laws of probability,which only hold in the limiting case where w=1,given linear probability preferences.Keynes also showed this in his examples of his conventional coefficient of weight and risk,c.The answers obtained when one applies the c coefficient will be sub and super additive.Keynes ,however,would argue that these are not biases or errors,but correct calculations obtained with incomplete information.The vast majority of decision makers are attempting to reason probabilistically without the benefit of knowing a unique probability distribution,a complete sample space,or being able to specify a complete order over all outcomes.They are rational.Tversky and Kahneman are requiring "SUPERRATIONALITY".Every calculation of a probability estimate that does not have a weight of 1 or violates Carnap's rule of total evidence will violate the mathematical laws of probability.L J Cohen,repeating Keynes's argument,spent 20 years trying to get this point across to Kahneman and Tversky in the journal Brain and Behavioral Science(1975-1994) .Tversky's support theory is a belated attempt to remedy their omission,but it has not been successfuly integrated into Prospect theory(1979)or Cumulative Prospect theory(1992),where the weighting function is still a function of a single variable representing probability,although additional parameters have been incorporated into the model.One could argue that it is Tversky and Kahneman who are irrationally insisting that decision makers use the mathematical laws of probability in situations where those laws are not applicable.
my humble opinion.......2004-04-28
Of course, my humble opinion relative to Nobel award committee will hold little intrinsic value, other than a layman's interpretation and application.
An economist myself, I found this book very interesting and educational to read. Although the book is quite verbose, the fluidity and organization of the content facilitates a smooth read - not a bludgeoning of the mind.
I found this book particularly applicable to research in market behavior, systemic analysis (because this book outlines the individuals and how they act within the system); even policy development (uncertainty).
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology, social psychology, economics, policy, and politics.
Regards,
Tyler Markowsky
This is the best book I've ever seen about probability........1998-10-21
I've never seen better explanations of how probabilities should be calculated. And the book is fascinating -- especially what the authors describe about the results of surveys designed to reveal the most common mistakes people make when estimating probabilities.
Book Description
Is your judgment influenced by personal biases?
In situations requiring careful judgment, we're all influenced by our own biases to some extent. But, with Max Bazerman's Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Sixth Edition, you can learn how to overcome those biases to make better managerial decisions.
The text examines judgment in a variety of organizational contexts, and provides practical strategies for changing your decision-making processes and improving these processes so that they become part of your permanent behavior. Throughout, you'll findnumerous hands-on decision exercises and examples from the author's extensive executive training experience that will help you enhance the quality of your managerial judgment.
Past editions have been used in top universities, in business schools, and in public policy, psychology, and economics classes. In addition, the text has been widely recognized by practitioners in the world of behavioral finance.
Revised with two new chapters
This Sixth Edition now adds chapters on bounded ethicality (Chapter 8) and bounded awareness (Chapter 11). Both of these chapters are based on Bazerman's recent writing with Dolly Chugh and Mahzarin Banaji.
Max H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. In addition, Max is also formally affiliated with the Kennedy School of Government, the Psychology Department, and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard. He is the author or co-author of over 150 research articles and chapters, and the author of numerous other books. Max was named one of the top 30 authors, speakers, and teachers of management by Executive Excellence in each of their two most recent rankings.
Customer Reviews:
We're not so smart.......2007-08-02
Have you ever wondered why some people make such stupid mistakes? Well, we are all prone, hard-wired and influenced to make astounding errors in judgment. Bazerman takes you on a journey into all the reasons why, full substantiated by science. All of it is fascinating. And, hopefully, once you are aware of what is really going on in our own brains we can be aware enough to mitigate those dangerous tendencies and become very clear about what we do.
Master Judgment for Managment and Life.......2007-02-09
A very well written book that will lead you to the most rigorous introspection in decision making
Book Description
Judgment pervades human experience. Do I have a strong enough case to go to trial? Will the Fed change interest rates? Can I trust this person? This book examines how people answer such questions. How do people cope with the complexities of the world economy, the uncertain behavior of friends and adversaries, or their own changing tastes and personalities? When are people's judgments prone to bias, and what is responsible for their biases? This book compiles psychologists' best attempts to answer these important questions.
Customer Reviews:
Of vast importance.......2005-10-31
This collection of articles has its origin in the work of one of the editors (Daniel Kahneman) and Amos Tversky (now deceased) in the 1970's. The first article in the book gives an introduction to this work and a brief historical survey. This work, along with current developments, is extremely important, for it sheds light on the differences (if any) between "intuitive judgment" and judgment that is based on more quantitative, mathematical, or algorithmic reasoning. If human judgment in uncertain environments is based on a limited number of simplifying heuristics, and not on extensive algorithmic processing, this would be very important for someone who is attempting to implement or simulate human reasoning in a machine. Economics, finance, and political decision-making are other areas that need a more accurate view of human judgment. Indeed, the "rational agent" assumption in classical economics, wherein the person makes choices by assessing the probability of each possible outcome and then assigning a utility to each, is considered to be fundamental, even axiomatic. It is therefore of great interest to examine challenges to this assumption.
In order to test the rational agent assumption, experiments must be conducted to test whether indeed the human assessment of likelihood and risk does indeed conform to the laws of probability. The data obtained in these experiments must then be judged as to whether it can be used to decide between the rational agent model and models of human judgment that are based on "intuition" (however vaguely or mystically this latter term is defined).
The authors of the first article in this book discuss some of the work on these questions, in particular the research that involved comparing expert clinical prediction with actuarial methods. The latter were found to perform better than the former. Even more interesting is that the clinician's assessments of their abilities were very far from what the record of success actually indicated. Some research has also indicated that intuitive judgments of likelihood do not correspond to what is obtained by Bayesian reasoning patterns.
These results, as the authors discuss, motivated performance models that were not based on the assumption of full rationality, but rather on what is called `bounded rationality.' The developers of this model felt that the processing limitations of the human brain dictated that humans must choose very limited heuristics when engaged in decision-making.
Also of great interest, and discussed in another article in the book, is the human ability to engage in affective forecasting. The latter involves the making of decisions based on the predictions of the emotional consequences of future events. The authors study the accuracy of affective forecasting and the accompanying notion of `durability bias.' The latter notion arises when individuals attempt to estimate how long particular feelings will last, and this estimation seems to be considerably longer than what actually occurs. The authors discuss some of the reasons for the durability bias in affective forecasting. One of these is ordinary misconstrual, where events are thought to be more powerful than what are actually realized, resulting in the overestimation of the duration of the affective responses to these events. Another regards the difficulty in forecasting affective reactions to events about which much is known. In addition, the authors point to "defensive pessimism" as to another of the reasons for inaccurate affective forecasting. This allows for mental preparation for the consequences of an event, and for positive feelings when the affective duration is smaller than what had been predicted. The main emphasis of the authors' article though is much more interesting than these explanations, for it involves the notion of a `psychological immune system.' Quoting the research of many psychologists, and arguing in analogy to the ordinary biological immune system, the authors view this system as one that protects the individual from an "overdose of gloom." Further, the functioning of the psychological immune system is optimized when it is not brought into the conscious focus of the individual. This `immune neglect' however has as a consequence the durability bias, in that if an individual fails to recognize her negative affect will decrease and be subjected to psychological mechanisms that assist greatly in this diminution, then she will tend to overestimate the time duration of her emotional reactions. The authors discuss empirical studies of durability bias in their article, and discuss some of the consequences of their studies. One of these concerns the possibility that humans could be mistaken about their own internal experiences. This is a very troubling possibility, but the authors give many references that purport to support it. This research shows that not only can people be completely mistaken about their feelings toward an object, but that their actual behaviors is better evidence of their internal states than what they report verbally.
Another interesting article in the book concerns the topic of automated choice heuristics. This area has arisen as a reaction to the idea that human choice can be predicted using theoretical models of optimal choice. Instead, one must identify the heuristics the people use to simplify their choices. These heuristics are used to restrict or compress the amount of information that is processed by the human brain and also to deal with the complexity in which this information is assimilated. There are many different theories of choice heuristics, and some of these are discussed in the article. Some of these theories involve heuristics that are "deliberate", i.e. involve the elimination of aspects and slower cognitive processes, and some involve heuristics that are "automatic" and judgmental, i.e. that arise from cognitive processes that are rapid and not controllable. Judgmental heuristics is also referred to as `System 1' heuristics in the article, whereas deliberate heuristics is referred to as `System 2' heuristics. The authors give a very interesting overview of automated choice heuristics, involving choices that are based on immediate affective evaluation, and choices that are using the option that is first thought of. All of these discussions, as are all the others in the book, are extremely important.
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