Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
-46% $17.28$17.28
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Save with Used - Good
$11.56$11.56
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: B's Book Bin
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
-
-
VIDEO -
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment Hardcover – May 18, 2021
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Purchase options and add-ons
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow and the coauthor of Nudge, a revolutionary exploration of why people make bad judgments and how to make better ones—"a tour de force” (New York Times).
Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients—or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different interviewers at the same firm make different decisions about indistinguishable job applicants—or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same interviewer, or the same customer service agent makes different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.
In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein show the detrimental effects of noise in many fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection. Wherever there is judgment, there is noise. Yet, most of the time, individuals and organizations alike are unaware of it. They neglect noise. With a few simple remedies, people can reduce both noise and bias, and so make far better decisions.
Packed with original ideas, and offering the same kinds of research-based insights that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment—and what we can do about it.
- Print length464 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLittle, Brown Spark
- Publication dateMay 18, 2021
- Dimensions6.4 x 1.85 x 9.6 inches
- ISBN-100316451401
- ISBN-13978-0316451406
Books with Buzz
Discover the latest buzz-worthy books, from mysteries and romance to humor and nonfiction. Explore more
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you
Get to know this book
What's it about?
A thought-provoking exploration of how variability in human judgment leads to errors and how to reduce this "noise" for better decision-making.Amazon editors say...

Kahneman examines the noise that clouds our thinking and helps readers to silence it.
Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor
Popular highlight
Judgment can therefore be described as measurement in which the instrument is a human mind.2,182 Kindle readers highlighted this
Popular highlight
A general property of noise is that you can recognize and measure it while knowing nothing about the target or bias.2,117 Kindle readers highlighted this
Popular highlight
System noise is inconsistency, and inconsistency damages the credibility of the system.1,913 Kindle readers highlighted this
From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Noise completes a trilogy that started with Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge. Together, they highlight what all leaders need to know to improve their own decisions, and more importantly, to improve decisions throughout their organizations. Noise reveals a critical lever for improving decisions, not captured in much of the existing behavioral economics literature. I encourage you to read Noise soon, before noise destroys more decisions in your organization."―Max H. Bazerman, author of Better, Not Perfect
“The influence of Noise should be seismic, as it explores a fundamental yet grossly underestimated peril of human judgment. Deepening its must-read status, it provides accessible methods for reducing the decisional menace.”―Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion
“Choices matter. Unfortunately, many of the choices people make are fundamentally flawed by the presence of noise, the subject of this absolutely fascinating and essential book. It is deeply researched, thoughtful, and accessible. I began it with a sense of intrigue and concluded it with a sense of celebration. We can make better choices in business, politics, and our personal lives. This book lights the way.”―Rita McGrath, author of Seeing Around Corners
"Brilliant! Noise goes deep on an under-appreciated source of error in human judgment: randomness. The story of noise has lacked the charisma of the story of cognitive bias…until now. Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein bring noise to life, making a compelling case for why we should take random variation in human judgment as seriously as we do bias and offering practical solutions for reducing noise (and bias) in judgment."
―Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets
"Noise may be the most important book I've read in more than a decade. A genuinely new idea so exceedingly important you will immediately put it into practice. A masterpiece."―Angela Duckworth, author of Grit
"In Noise, the authors brilliantly apply their unique and novel insights into the flaws in human judgment to every sphere of human endeavor: from moneyball coaches to central bankers to military commanders to heads of state. Noise is a masterful achievement and a landmark in the field of psychology."―Philip E. Tetlock, coauthor of Superforecasting
“The earth has been so fully explored that scientists can’t possibly discover a previously unknown mammal the size of an elephant. The same could be said about the landscape of decision-making, yet Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein have discovered a problem as large as an elephant: noise. In this important book they show us why noise matters, why there’s so much more of it than we realize, and how to reduce it. Implementing their advice would give us more profitable businesses, healthier citizens, a fairer legal system, and happier lives.”―Jonathan Haidt, NYU Stern School of Business
"Noise is an absolutely brilliant investigation of a massive societal problem that has been hiding in plain sight."―Steven Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics
"A tour de force of scholarship and clear writing."―New York Times
“Well-researched, convincing and practical book . . . written by the all-star team . . . The details and evidence will satisfy rigorous and demanding readers, as will the multiple viewpoints it offers on noise. Every academic, policymaker, leader and consultant ought to read this book. People with the power and persistence required to apply the insights in Noise will make more humane and fair decisions, save lives, and prevent time, money and talent from going to waste.”―Robert Sutton, Washington Post
"Convincing...A humbling lesson in inaccuracy."―Financial Times
About the Author
He has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and Hilgard Award for Career Contributions to General Psychology, and the Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology from the American Psychological Association. He lives in New York City. He is the author of New York Times bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Olivier Sibony is a professor, writer and advisor specializing in the quality of strategic thinking and the design of decision processes. Sibony teaches Strategy, Decision Making and Problem Solving at HEC Paris. He is also an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School in Oxford University. Sibony's research centers on improving the quality of decision making by reducing the impact of behavioral biases. He is the author of numerous articles in academic and popular publications, including Before You Make That Big Decision, co-authored with Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.
Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. From 2013 to 2014, he served on President Obama's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. From 2016 to 2017, he served on the Defense Innovation Board of the US Department of Defense. Sunstein is author of many articles and books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The World According to Star Wars and Nudge (with Richard H. Thaler). His other books include Republic.com, Risk and Reason, Why Societies Need Dissent, The Second Bill of Rights, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics of Influence, and Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
@casssunstein
Product details
- Publisher : Little, Brown Spark; First Edition (May 18, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 464 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316451401
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316451406
- Item Weight : 1.51 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.4 x 1.85 x 9.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #27,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59 in Business Decision Making
- #93 in Decision-Making & Problem Solving
- #113 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product

4:31
Click to play video

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
Merchant Video
About the authors

Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, where he is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is by far the most cited law professor in the United States. From 2009 to 2012 he served in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations, and written many articles and books, including Simpler: The Future of Government and Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter.

Daniel Kahneman (Hebrew: דניאל כהנמן, born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with Vernon L. Smith). His empirical findings challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory. With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), and developed prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).
In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. In the same year, his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarizes much of his research, was published and became a best seller. He is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Kahneman is a founding partner of TGG Group, a business and philanthropy consulting company. He is married to Royal Society Fellow Anne Treisman.
In 2015 The Economist listed him as the seventh most influential economist in the world.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by see page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Olivier Sibony is a professor, writer and advisor specializing in the quality of strategic thinking and the design of decision processes. Olivier teaches Strategy, Decision Making and Problem Solving at HEC Paris. He is also an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School in Oxford University.
Before he was a professor, Olivier spent 25 years with McKinsey & Company in France and in the U.S., where he was a Senior Partner. There, he was, at various times, a leader of the Global Strategy Practice and of the Consumer Goods & Retail Sector.
Olivier’s research interests focus on improving the quality of decision-making by reducing the impact of behavioral biases. He is the author of articles in various publications including “Before You Make That Big Decision”, co-authored with Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, which was selected as the cover feature of Harvard Business Review’s book selection of “10 Must-Reads on Making Smart Decisions”. In French, he also authored a book, Réapprendre à Décider.
Olivier builds on this research and on his experience to advise senior leaders on strategic and operational decision-making. He is a frequent keynote speaker and facilitator of senior management and supervisory board meetings. He also serves as a member of corporate, advisory and investment boards.
Olivier Sibony is a graduate of HEC Paris and holds a Ph. D. from Université Paris-Dauphine.
He lives in Paris.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book easy to read and keep kids busy. They also disagree on the writing style, with some finding it easy to follow and dense at times. Readers also find the narrative informative and well-written, while others say it's not as good as Thinking, Fast and Slow. Opinions are mixed on the narrative and noise. Some find it informative and insightful, while other say it repeats the same message all over again.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book interesting and thought-provoking. They also say the Sage voice is interesting and keeps their grandkids busy.
"...To drive this point home, the book serves well-sourced and engaging narrative examples from criminal law, medicine, prediction, recruiting, forensic..." Read more
"...Nevertheless, it is an important book. Noise shows in the real world the importance of the statistician’s distinction between bias and variance...." Read more
"...In a NutshellNoise is an excellent book about improving our judgment by reducing scattered results (noise) and reducing inconsistencies..." Read more
"...to provide new insights or provocative thoughts, makes this a fairly dull read." Read more
Customers find the book very dense, exhausting, and deep. They also appreciate the excellent structure and perfectly balanced prose.
"...a book to take lightly, though it is an easy read thanks to its excellent structure and perfectly balanced prose...." Read more
"A very dense book. Slow reading. Not for everyone. However, the subject is fascinating & quite important...." Read more
"...Although exhaustive and deep, the book is easy to read, uses lots of excellent cases/examples and at times quite captivating...." Read more
"A dense, accurate slog..." Read more
Customers find the narrative very informative and well written. They also appreciate the well-sourced and engaging examples from criminal law and medicine. However, some readers feel the book is easy to read but not as good as Thinking, Fast and Slow. They say the level of insight in this book is modest and the attempts to make the viewpoint scientific are silly.
"...To drive this point home, the book serves well-sourced and engaging narrative examples from criminal law, medicine, prediction, recruiting, forensic..." Read more
"...But if you expect to read a useful and important book that enables better decision making you will not be disappointed. Highly recommended." Read more
"...This part is somewhat disappointing. The authors recommend that we apply algorithms rather than non-structured deliberations...." Read more
"...This is an excellent overview of structured decision processes and why they often improve judgment...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the writing style. Some find the book easy to read and follow, with perfectly balanced prose. However, others say the writing is very dense at times and the authors burn through pages putting together frameworks. They also say the book overcomplicates a simple message and repeats the same message all over again in almost every chapter.
"...This is not a book to take lightly, though it is an easy read thanks to its excellent structure and perfectly balanced prose...." Read more
"...Overall, the unnecessarily dense style that overcomplicates a simple message, lack of a clear target audience, and a narrative arc that just takes..." Read more
"This book is a gem. Easy to follow, yet rich with info. Loved the way the authors explained error calculation. Pythagorean theorem came in, too...." Read more
"A remarkable read. Kahneman is an excellent writer & I enjoy his ability to dissect these difficult topics into digestible chapters, for those..." Read more
Customers are mixed about the noise in the book. Some find it well written and comprehensive, while others say it's biased.
"...They also share ways to reduce noise in different settings: personal methods, such as training people to continually update their views with..." Read more
"...Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein are sounding an alarm. Noise is so pervasive that it is difficult to spot...." Read more
"A longer than average book, yet very well written and very throughout on the subject of noise in the human decision making process...." Read more
"...The first is bias and the second is noise...." Read more
Reviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Instead of listing the contents of the book here (use the "Look inside" feature instead!), I'll summarize my immediate takeaways after spending a few hours with the book.
It is clear that Kahneman is looking at the problem space through a different lens than his magnum opus, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," which undoubtfully is also due to the influence of his co-authors. To emphasize this, the book is consistently narrated in the second person plural.
A major early concern is distinguishing noise from bias – the latter having been the star of the show in most popular psychology literature, including the aforementioned book. The focus in "Noise" is societal, statistical, instead of the causal stories of individual biases, which we prefer as explanations in our primarily individualistic Western cultures.
The first pages open with a delightfully insightful example of how to understand the difference between noise and bias (see the attached photos) that is immediately clear. The distinction is important, as is the realization that noise should be addressed first before bias is. Even if we don't know if we're aiming at the right thing, we need to narrow down the scatter pattern first. Counterintuitive perhaps but true: this strategy gives us a faster, more accurate way of actually hitting our target once the adjustments are made.
"Noise is the unwarranted variability of judgments, and there is too much of it." Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein are sounding an alarm. Noise is so pervasive that it is difficult to spot. We've learned to live with it, too much, and it is costing us and our institutions dearly. Noise is too often thought of as random errors that will cancel each other out, but that is not helpful. Indeed, it is a societal problem: if one judge over-sentences and another is overly lenient, there is no "averaging out" – there is human tragedy and failure of justice. To drive this point home, the book serves well-sourced and engaging narrative examples from criminal law, medicine, prediction, recruiting, forensic science, financial forecasting, patent law, education, insurance sales, and many more fields.
This is not a book to take lightly, though it is an easy read thanks to its excellent structure and perfectly balanced prose. I can only wish it will be read extremely widely, and its findings and recommendations will be rapidly put into use.
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2021
Instead of listing the contents of the book here (use the "Look inside" feature instead!), I'll summarize my immediate takeaways after spending a few hours with the book.
It is clear that Kahneman is looking at the problem space through a different lens than his magnum opus, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," which undoubtfully is also due to the influence of his co-authors. To emphasize this, the book is consistently narrated in the second person plural.
A major early concern is distinguishing noise from bias – the latter having been the star of the show in most popular psychology literature, including the aforementioned book. The focus in "Noise" is societal, statistical, instead of the causal stories of individual biases, which we prefer as explanations in our primarily individualistic Western cultures.
The first pages open with a delightfully insightful example of how to understand the difference between noise and bias (see the attached photos) that is immediately clear. The distinction is important, as is the realization that noise should be addressed first before bias is. Even if we don't know if we're aiming at the right thing, we need to narrow down the scatter pattern first. Counterintuitive perhaps but true: this strategy gives us a faster, more accurate way of actually hitting our target once the adjustments are made.
"Noise is the unwarranted variability of judgments, and there is too much of it." Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein are sounding an alarm. Noise is so pervasive that it is difficult to spot. We've learned to live with it, too much, and it is costing us and our institutions dearly. Noise is too often thought of as random errors that will cancel each other out, but that is not helpful. Indeed, it is a societal problem: if one judge over-sentences and another is overly lenient, there is no "averaging out" – there is human tragedy and failure of justice. To drive this point home, the book serves well-sourced and engaging narrative examples from criminal law, medicine, prediction, recruiting, forensic science, financial forecasting, patent law, education, insurance sales, and many more fields.
This is not a book to take lightly, though it is an easy read thanks to its excellent structure and perfectly balanced prose. I can only wish it will be read extremely widely, and its findings and recommendations will be rapidly put into use.
With that in mind, many readers come to Noise hoping for something of like importance to Thinking Fast and Slow. That work summarized decades of Nobel Prize winning research that showed how human beings use heuristics to reach decisions that run counter to what a statistical, or at least well thought out approach, would make.
Noise is not such a book. Most of the research are summaries of the work of other scientists, there is a lot of explanatory material that many readers will find redundant with their education and both wordiness and repeated material that should have been avoided.
Nevertheless, it is an important book. Noise shows in the real world the importance of the statistician’s distinction between bias and variance. A model can be inaccurate not only by being biased and consistent but also by providing widely varying answers around a true value.
While most people in research or the business world emphasize reducing bias, Kahneman and his co-authors emphasize the importance of reducing noise. Prison sentences that vary widely from different judges, contradictory diagnoses from different physicians and different evaluations of workplace performance are just some of the areas that could benefit from noise reduction.
After showing its importance, the authors then analyze noise into its different components: level bias where different scales are used; pattern noise resulting from hidden factors such as personality or experience; and occasion noise which is the influence that moods and other idiosyncratic factors have that cause judgment to fluctuate (technically a subtype of pattern noise).
The authors then give a serious treatment of ways to reduce noise in different settings: personal methods, such as training people to continually update their views with contrary perspectives; and collective approaches such as how to best leverage the expertise of a team charged with an important business decision.
Again, much of the material can be found in other books and Noise is not the equivalent of Kahneman and Tversky’s years of original research into a previously unexplored topic. But if you expect to read a useful and important book that enables better decision making you will not be disappointed. Highly recommended.















