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Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty (Evolution and Cognition)
 
 
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Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty (Evolution and Cognition) [Hardcover]

Gerd Gigerenzer (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Book Description

0195328981 978-0195328981 May 2, 2008
Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavior and interaction with the environment. Seen from this perspective, human behavior is more rational than it might otherwise appear. This work is extremely influential and has spawned an entire research program.

This volume (which follows on a previous collection, Adaptive Thinking, also published by OUP) collects his most recent articles, looking at how people use "fast and frugal heuristics" to calculate probability and risk and make decisions. It includes a newly writen, substantial introduction, and the articles have been revised and updated where appropriate. This volume should appeal, like the earlier volumes, to a broad mixture of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others who study decision making.

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Editorial Reviews

Review


"Gerd Gigerenzer has created new, pathbreaking ways of thinking about human rationality. His ideas build on one another and are best seen as part of a coherent whole that is when the nature of his arguments emerges most clearly."-- Leda Cosmides, University of California Santa Barbara


About the Author

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planch Institute for Human Development Berlin.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 2, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195328981
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195328981
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,546,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Useful, well written, readable, enjoyable--and very probably true, December 7, 2011
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I read this author's _Reckoning with Risk_ some time ago and found it worthwhile. This is an even better book, despite being an earlier one (2000) than that (2003).

Like evolution, probability is a slippery, subtle subject and some of its main principles and their ramifications can be hard to grasp, even for intelligent people. This book is one of the best out there for explaining some of the fundamental concepts in uncertainty and probability. Gigerenzer uses some striking historical examples to do this. One of these is about John Arbuthnot (1710) who used the concept that we now call the null hypothesis to prove the existence of God. Gigerenzer observes that "Arbuthnot's test illuminates the possibilities and limitations of a null hypothesis.... Divine providence always wins if the null hypothesis loses."

As well as explaining some key concepts such as the null hypothesis, this books shows them in action, as in the Chapter 9 "Understanding Risks in Healthcare."

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve or check their understanding of some of the fundamental concepts and also gaps in our current understanding of uncertainty and probability.
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1 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Phew., June 27, 2011
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Debra M. Ridley (Hampshire, England) - See all my reviews
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I have read this text from cover to cover and must say that it is no easy read despite the fact that I studied this subject quite exstensively
I think part of the problem is that the author is rather too argumentitive, which results in certain areas of the book appearing over complicated.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
null ritual, gaze heuristic, cognitive illusions program, media weather forecasts, statistical innumeracy, frugal tree, noncompensatory information, dread hypothesis, probabilistic weather forecasts, blow for sanity, recognition heuristic, optimality modeling, optimizing team, frugal heuristics, ecological rationality, unbounded rationality, adaptive toolbox, cue weights, overconfidence bias, positive mammogram, null hypothesis testing, unsystematic error, optimization under constraints, representative thinking, cue values
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, New York, Daniel Bernoulli, World Health Organization, Richard Feynman, Thomas Bayes, Herbert Simon, Ian Hacking, Karl Pearson, John Arbuthnot, Wilhelm Wundt
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