Using the brain to develop decision algorithms

There is not enough information in this article to know the details, but the inventor of the PalmPilot has a new venture to model decision making.

College football decision trees

Here's a nice little article on using decision trees to predict football outcomes.  Thanks JD!

Football math

UConn surprised everyone for a fourth-down conversion late in the game against Pittsburgh.  Here's the math for doing this more in football.

Subprime mortgages and CDS

Here is an interesting interview with Michael Lewis about the financial meltdown.  Part of it has to do with how so many people made so many dumb mistakes.  I hope this makes people more skeptical of their decisions, and do a bit more analysis and think about how it could go wrong.

Costs and risks

The "Top Gear" guy had a nice rant in the Times Online about laws to mitigate risks.  Can we think of a way to connect the risk with the costs?  Suppose that we could eliminate a risk entirely if everyone just paid a small price.  Think polio, for example.  Well, then what about this risk, or that risk.  Surely the same solution applies, right?  As Jeremy points out, we all take our shoes off at the airport now, so the terrorists decided to use their underwear.  What will we have to do now, if risk elimination is the goal.

Or are there risks that we just have to live with?  Where do we draw the line?  Can we use probabilities and decision analysis to help make policies a little more bearable?

Decision making when you know you will be second guessed

I teach quite a bit about structuring problems to help make decisions. Usually models can help illuminate the tradeoffs, and sometimes it becomes much more clear what the right strategy is.

But sometimes the downside of the "right" decision comes to dominate the thinking of the decision maker. This is a fundamental part of the dilemma facing the contestant on the game show Let's Make a Deal when they are offered the chance to change their original decision. Even if they are better off changing, the emotional pain of changing and then losing makes them stay with their first choice. They can hear their friends saying "You won the car and then you gave it away."

Here's an interesting article about football coaches going for it on fourth down. I am not sure about all the details of the study, but it is probably true that the thought of what the sports writers and talk radio people will say play an important part of the calculations of when to try or punt.

Dilbert economics and a decision tree

Scott Adams has an interesting blog where he tries to reason his way through some of the issues of the day (a bit more seriously than in his cartoons). He has been blogging about all of the decisions associated with building his new house, and one of the big decisions is whether or not to use solar power.

Here is a post where he recognizes that the usual analysis (decision) about solar is just a choice of yes or no. This sounds okay, because you're in the middle of building the house and have to make a decision, right?

Well, there's another branch that people often overlook - wait and retrofit solar later. Nice observation, especially since that branch may be the best one.

I also can't help but smile when I read the summary:

My new home will have solar power. It was a city requirement. I plan to brag about it to people who are passionate about the environment and bad at math.