Decision-Making Books - Page 3

Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions

Read Montague

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great book ... be aware - same book as "Why Choose This Book" 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

This is one of my favorite books. Unfortunately, it was not mentioned anywhere that this is the same book as "Why Choose This Book" before I purchased it.

I guess this was not selling with the other name, or the title was badly chosen in terms of describing what the book was about.

I was hoping that this book was going to be a refinement and elaboration of his ideas in "Why Choose This Book" instead of the same book.

Editorial Review:

“A fascinating introduction” (Steven Pinker) to the science of decision-making

One of the leading thinkers in the computational neuroscience revolution offers a brilliant new perspective on the mind’s decision-making process. Why do we make the choices we make? How can science explain free will? If our brains are like slow computers originally programmed for survival with goals like food, water, and sex, why do we make choices that go against our own biological best interests? Where do values come from? What role do emotions play? From how we decide what we consume to the romantic, ethical, and financial choices we make, Read Montague guides readers through a new approach to the mind that is both entertaining and illuminating.

Argumentation and Critical Decision Making (6th Edition)

Richard D. Rieke, Malcolm O. Sillars, Tarla Rai Peterson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

This Book Could Change Your Life 5 out of 5 stars.
27 of 29 people found this review helpful.

Not only have I read this book, but I did so in conjunction from taking an argumentation class from the author, Dr. Richard Rieke. Dr. Rieke is an extremely experienced and talented communicator and this book would be a valuable addition to any scholar and layperson alike.

Rieke's background includes mediation and negotiation for some of the most prominent global companies and more than 20 years experience as an educator. Currently he is a Communication professor at the University of Utah and the director of the university's Honor's Program.

What I've learned from this book is how to go about the dialectical process (research, criticial thinking, refuting) an issue to constructing a rhetorical argument (persuasive case) in favor of one side or another. I feel that this book has given me a very strong grasp on how to construct various types of arguments, and how to modify them based on who is supposed to be persuaded by the argument.

One of the things I liked most about this book was it's very detailed and logically organized for the processes of argumentation. A list of terms is presented at the beginning of the chapter, each chapter is subcategorized for maximum orgnization, and each chapter is concluded with a summary and suggested exercises.

Each chapter is detailed with universally used information about how argumentation relates to various spheres (or contexts) like science, religion, business, politics, etc. In addition, the authors provide numerous, clear examples to help you understand their points.

I have used this book in not only preparing a brief and case thesis for the related class, but have used as a guide in creating numerous other essays for other Communications classes.

I will not be selling this textbook back to the university bookstore; instead it has earned a permenant spot in my library because I know I will be referencing it often for other classes, and in business well after I graduate. I feel especially privileged to have been able to take the course from the author, because Rieke is very articulate and an excellent educator.

Editorial Review:

The first and most thoroughly developed audience-oriented argumentation text, Argumentation and Critical Decision Making presents argumentation as a cooperative, communicative process. The text examines the general principles of argument in a rigorous yet readable manner and then applies those principles to different spheres of life--law, science, religion, business, and politics--to explore how conventions of argument change when applied to these real-world arenas. Focusing on the dynamics of decision-making and using real-life examples to illustrate principles, this book aims to help readers develop practical argumentation skills within the world of their daily lives.

Deadly Decisions: How False Knowledge Sank the Titanic, Blew Up the Shuttle, and Led America into War

Christopher Burns

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A month before its catastrophic failure, Wall Street analysts rated Enron a 'buy'. In 2001, at the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense, a squabbling bureaucracy buried warnings of a looming terrorist attack. And Congress and the country were talked into war against a collapsing dictatorship on the basis of detailed and compelling intelligence, which turned out to be false. How could all of the experts be so wrong? In "Deadly Decisions", Christopher Burns, one of America's leading experts on modern information management, searches the biology of the brain, the behaviour of groups, and the structure of organisations for practical answers to the problem of 'virtual truth' - elaborate constructs of internally consistent evidence and assumptions that purport to describe reality, but can often be dead wrong!How can we avoid wishful thinking, information overload, uncertainty absorption, and an unintentional twisting of the facts? Why are start-up groups agile and innovative while large organisations lumber along, bogged down in false knowledge? How can societies rediscover the power of truthful communication?Burns suggests that, as individuals, we must learn to be sceptical of our own sly and beguiling minds. As members of a group, we need to be more wary of the omissions, inventions, and distortions that come all too naturally to all of us. And as consumers of information we have to hold professionals, politicians, and the media more accountable. As the book makes clear, only through a deeper understanding of how individuals, groups, and society process information can we succeed in those extraordinary endeavours that are the promise of the Information Age.

Tools of Critical Thinking: Metathoughts for Psychology

David A. Levy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

I use this to help teach software testers. 5 out of 5 stars.
26 of 28 people found this review helpful.

I teach software testers how to explore and analyze products. I recommend this book to all my students.

I found it entertaining and insightful. But, the main thing I like about the book is that it's set up so that every chapter is a standalone tool for analysis. You can read and use one chapter without having to read any of the others. I collect books on critical thinking, and this is the only one I feel I can recommend to casual students of the art.

Editorial Review:

This is a book designed to improve one's thinking skills through the application of metathinking principles, which consist of a series of specific strategies, methods, and techniques for approaching all forms of inquiry, study and problem solving, with particular application to the field of psychology. Metathoughts are cognitive tools that can be successfully taught, learned, and utilized to consider issues from a variety of different perspectives and alternate points of view. The ideas in this book are vividly brought to life with illustrative examples, clinical anecdotes, case vignettes, contemporary social problems and issues, challenging exercises, and clever satires—all drawn from a diverse sampling of topics within psychology and packaged in a form that is engrossing, easy to read, and eminently useful. Even ideas that potentially might be confusing, obscure, or elusive are organized and presented in a manner that is straightforward, understandable, and enjoyable.

Decide and Conquer: Make Winning Decisions and Take Control of Your Life

Stephen P. Robbins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A nice guy... A nice book... 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I took one of Dr. Robbins' management courses
at SDSU over a dozen years ago, and to this day
I'm still using the decision-making techniques
he presented, in my own life...

In person, at the podium, Dr. Robbins is warm,
bright and funny, and he gets his points across
with laser precision...

Happily, his writing style mirrors his speaking
style, and it makes for an enjoyable read...

I recommend this book to anyone who could use
an intelligent angel sitting on their shoulder...

Editorial Review:

Decide & Conquer brings together all the practical skills you need to make the best possible decisions every day. This quick, concise book identifies every key obstacle to quality decision-making... and shows exactly how to overcome them. Discover how your personality impacts your decision-making... why instincts and experience can lead you astray... how to simplify complicated decisions without oversimplifying them... and much more. You’ll use these techniques in your relationships, your finances, your career ... every day, everywhere.

Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In a complex and uncertain world, humans and animals make decisions under the constraints of limited knowledge, resources, and time. Yet models of rational decision making in economics, cognitive science, biology, and other fields largely ignore these real constraints and instead assume agents with perfect information and unlimited time. About forty years ago, Herbert Simon challenged this view with his notion of "bounded rationality." Today, bounded rationality has become a fashionable term used for disparate views of reasoning. This book promotes bounded rationality as the key to understanding how real people make decisions. Using the concept of an "adaptive toolbox," a repertoire of fast and frugal rules for decision making under uncertainty, it attempts to impose more order and coherence on the idea of bounded rationality. The contributors view bounded rationality neither as optimization under constraints nor as the study of people’s reasoning fallacies. The strategies in the adaptive toolbox dispense with optimization and, for the most part, with calculations of probabilities and utilities. The book extends the concept of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to emotions; it analyzes social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools as rational strategies; and it shows how smart heuristics can exploit the structure of environments.

Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking

Ralph L. Keeney

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The standard way of thinking about decisions is backwards, says Ralph Keeney: people focus first on identifying alternatives rather than on articulating values. A problem arises and people react, placing the emphasis on mechanics and fixed choices instead of on the objectives that give decisionmaking its meaning. In this book, Keeney shows how recognizing and articulating fundamental values can lead to the identification of decision opportunities and the creation of better alternatives. The intent is to be proactive and to select more attractive decisions to ponder before attempting any solutions.

Keeney describes specific procedures for articulating values by identifying and structuring objectives qualitatively, and he shows how to apply these procedures in various cases. He then explains how to quantify objectives using simple models of values. Such value analysis, Keeney demonstrates, can yield a full range of alternatives, thus converting decision problems into opportunities. This approach can be used to uncover hidden objectives, to direct the collection of information, to improve communication, to facilitate collective decisionmaking, and to guide strategic thinking. To illustrate these uses, Keeney shows how value-focused thinking works in many business contexts, such as designing an integrated circuit tester and managing a multibillion-dollar utility company; in government contexts, such as planning future NASA space missions and deciding how to transport nuclear waste to storage sites; and in personal contexts, such as choosing career moves and making wise health and safety decisions.

An incisive, applicable contribution to the art and science of decisionmaking, Value-Focused Thinking will be extremely useful to anyone from consultants and managers to systems analysts and students.

The One Decision: Making the Single Choice That Will Lead to a Life of More

Judith Wright

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Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This New Year why make resolutions you know you won't keep when you can make THE ONE DECISION that will positively transform your life forever?

Have you ever wondered why relatively few people lead truly great lives? The answer: great lives are founded on what author Judith Wright calls The One Decision. In this powerful book, Wright reveals that each of us must make a personal decision about the kind of life we want to live-and allow this simple yet profound choice to become the guiding force for everything we do.

Many of us spend years searching for meaning in our lives, exploring numerous paths in our quest for happiness-we change careers, lose weight, take up art, attend seminars, read books, buy bigger houses and fancier cars, or even get rid of it all. Yet, Wright explains, the problem lies not in what we are doing but rather why we are doing it. What, in other words, is our purpose?

Drawing on her twenty-five years as an educator and seminar leader, Wright shows us that, while there are many choices we can make in our lives, there is only One Decision. Sure, we can make any number of moves toward bettering our lives-we can quit smoking, start exercising, watch less TV-but the attainment of real life satisfaction will never come from any action or step but rather, requires a fundamental shift in perspective-that will completely transform the fabric of one's life. For many this decision flows naturally out of a personal tragedy or a "bottoming out" that was only a matter of time. Yet, says Wright, you don't have to wait for crisis to figure out how you want to live your life. You only need to make a commitment to live according to your true purpose. Culling from her work at the Wright Institute, she relates the common denominators that have led her thousands of students to this crossroads, and offers a thirty-day program for forming our own personal vision. This illuminating book reveals that the key to true happiness is just a decision away.

Cool Tools for Hot Topics: Group Tools to Facilitate Meetings When Things Are Hot (The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding)

Ron Kraybill, Evelyn Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

How to resolve a dispute - 101 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

A colleague handed me a copy of The Little Book of Cool Tools for Hot Topics: Group Tools to Facilitate Meetings When Things Are Hot (The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding). We both work in an organization, live in a community, have allegiance to a Land, and are concerned for the whole world - so conflict and disputes are all around us.

"It's a quick read, hands on, lots of useful techniques; you'll like it."

It was and I did.

Whether you are planning to lead a group through a conflicted time, or will be part of the group itself and want to learn more about taking a larger point of view - this little book is a great resource.

Bob Leming
Philadelphia

An Essential Book for your Toolbox 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Everyone who is facilitating conversations on difficult subjects and/or conflictual issues should read this book. Ron Kraybill gives us his best tools, learned from years of mediating and teaching, including years working in South Africa. Whatever your issue or conflict, there is a tool here that will help you.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reinventing Yourself

Jeff Davidson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Despite the author's rambling thoughts, it's still worthwhile to read! 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was attracted to this book because of the author's earlier work, Breathing Space, which impressed me very much with his wonderful writings about surviving information overload.

Although this book is packed with a lot of useful actionable ideas, I feel that the author could have easily scaled down the book to 250 pages from 350 pages. This would make the book more concise & crisp to read.

Despite the author's rambling thoughts, I would still recommend this book to readers, particularly young professionals, who are interested to learn more about mastering self renewal & mid-life transitions.

In a nut shell, these are the principal themes in the book:

- leveraging your circumstances;
- redefining your mind & body;
- reinvigorating your career;
- improving your relationships;
- reinventing other aspects of your life;

Kudos to the author for coming up with this handy blueprint for helping young readers to become smarter, stronger, & more successful in life!

Editorial Review:

The hardest part of changing your life is figuring out how to get started. "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reinventing Yourself" helps you figure out where you are and how to get what you want. It will show you how to assess your work, home, and family life, and then how to set goals and make them happen.