38 quotes
Rational decisions are impossible unless you make clear at the outset just what it is that you want to accomplish, and what you want to avoid.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
The basic ailment afflicts more than the use of taxes; it affects all matters in which the unaffected or uninformed are the decision makers for all of us.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
All of this is well known to military operations analysts, mostly civilians, but is resisted by far too many high-ranking officers. It sounds sort of, well, mathematical, and that’s not macho.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
Proportional representation makes it harder to trample a minority, but correspondingly harder to effectuate the desires of the majority. Take your choice. It comes down, as usual, to the ends you seek.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
Baseball, the most statistics-afflicted sport there is, is fair game for amateur decision-making buffs to second-guess, and it is truly amazing (at least to this author) how many of the hallowed traditions don’t stand up to reasonable scrutiny.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
It is always a good strategy for two players to join forces (or conspire) against the third, and to settle their own differences when he has been done in. With suitable variations, that lesson applies to games with more and more players, to say nothing, alas, of life.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
The common good is always in conflict with concern for individuals, and it doesn’t help rational decision making to pretend otherwise. Besides, the common good and the common want may themselves have little to do with each other.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
People seem to flinch at the word probability—it has too many syllables. Besides, it sounds mathematical, and it’s become politically correct in our country to be proud of not knowing any mathematics. (We’re already paying the price for that.)
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
As far back as the earliest biblical times, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to thy friends and neighbors—all bets were off when dealing with tribal enemies. Especially when they had other religious predilections.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
The Constitution still leaves apportionment to the politicians most affected by it, in clear conflict with common sense, and congressional salaries are still left in the hands of the beneficiaries, again in clear conflict with common sense. Two hundred years, and no progress.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
It is said that nature abhors a vacuum (a saying that has always struck this author as unusually dumb—since the vast majority of the natural universe is in fact a splendid vacuum, nature must in fact love a vacuum), but any perceived voids in the law books do tend to get filled in due course.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
The laws of probability are mighty powerful, and they never sleep. If this were more widely understood there’d be a lot less crowing about good luck, and a lot less guilt about bad luck. And we’d have a more civilized world. Some things really do happen by chance, and there is little we can do to change that.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
Honorable lawyers will tell you that it is the function of a lawyer to help the jury or the court to follow the truth, wherever it may lead, but lawyers with that as their prime objective will soon have few clients. Most lawyers will tell you that their real obligation is to present the best possible case for the clients who are paying them—quite a different goal.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
In our modern societies, in the United States and elsewhere, there are simply too many ways to stop things, and too few to keep them going. As recently as forty years ago, in this author’s direct memory, that wasn’t true. (If the Interstate Highway System were to be proposed now, it wouldn’t stand a chance.)
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
It turns out that you can’t do better than a chance in ten of multiplying your bankroll by a factor of ten, even with the very best strategy. That’s a general rule for fair (or almost fair) games: the probability of achieving your objective before going broke is exactly the inverse of the amount by which you want to increase your fortune.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
This is a general feature of all such sports. Though all managers and professionals speak wisely of streaks, and of batting slumps, and hot hands in basketball, the evidence is routinely consistent with the view that there are no such things, and that observers are notoriously bad in judging whether something is random or has a systematic pattern.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
This author freely admits to the shame of being a professor, and even to the worse shame of having a Ph.D.—the price of youthful indiscretion—so he is instantly rejected for jury service when the facts are made known to the lawyers in the case. If not by one side, then surely by the other—it depends on which one has the weaker case, and therefore places more value on confusing the jury.
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)
There may be people who know more than you, and can therefore do a better job of predicting the odds. If you can find one to help you out, do so. But steer clear of phoney prophets, like astrologers, palmists, and readers of crystal balls. (We may have lost some readers on that sentence. Polls continue to show that an appalling and disturbing fraction of Americans still believe in that baloney.)
Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)