Noise

The Sunday Times bestseller ‘A monumental, gripping book … Outstanding’ Sunday Times Wherever there is human judgement, there is noise. ‘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 ‘An absolutely brilliant investigation of a massive societal problem that has been hiding in plain sight’ Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics From the world-leaders in strategic thinking and the multi-million copy bestselling authors of Thinking Fast and Slow and Nudge, the next big book to change the way you think. Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients – or that two judges in the same court give different sentences to people who have committed matching crimes. Now imagine that the same doctor and the same judge make different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday, or they haven’t yet had lunch. These are examples of noise: variability in judgements that should be identical. In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein show how noise produces errors in many fields, including in medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, forensic science, child protection, creative strategy, performance review and hiring. And although noise can be found wherever people are making judgements and decisions, individuals and organizations alike commonly ignore its impact, at great cost. Packed with new ideas, and drawing on the same kind of sharp analysis and breadth of case study that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge international bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise and bias in decision-making. We all make bad judgements more than we think. With a few simple remedies, this groundbreaking book explores what we can do to make better ones.

The Sunday Times bestseller (May 2021) ‘A tour de force of scholarship and clear writing’New York Times ‘This is a monumental, gripping book. It is also bracing … The three authors have transformed the way we think about the world. They have looked beneath and beyond the way we make decisions and organise our lives. A follow-up of sorts to Thinking, Fast and Slow, it is a further step down the road towards a more complex and realistic grasp of human affairs that is replacing the crude simplifications of the recent past. Outstanding’Sunday Times ‘As you’d expect from its authors, it is a rigorous approach to an important topic… There’s lots to surprise and entertain. Anyone who has found the literature on cognitive biases important will find this a valuable addition to their knowledge’ Danny Finkelstein, The Times ‘Noise is everywhere and is seriously disruptive. The authors have come up with a bold solution. The book is a satisfying journey through a big but not unsolvable problem, with plenty of fascinating case studies along the way. Humans are often bad at making decisions. But we can get better’Martha Gill, Evening Standard ‘The greatest source of ineffective policies are often not biases, corruption or ill-will, but three “I”: Intuition, Ignorance and Inertia. This book masterfully demonstrates why the three “I” are so pervasive, and what we can do to fight them. An essential, eye opening read’Esther Duflo, winner of a 2019 Nobel Prize ‘In Noise, the authors brilliantly apply their unique and novel insights into the flaws in human judgment to every sphere of human endeavour… Noise is a masterful achievement and a landmark in the field of psychology’Philip E. Tetlock, co-author of Superforecasting ‘An electrifying exploration of the human mind, this book will permanently change the way we think about the scale and scope of bias’David Lammy

Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli psychologist and economist 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. He is the sole author of the international bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow. Cass R. Sunstein is an American legal scholar, former White House staffer in Obama’s administration, and co-author of the international bestseller Nudge. Olivier Sibony is a professor, writer and keynote speaker specializing in the quality of strategic thinking and the design of decision processes. He teaches at HEC Paris and is an Associate Fellow at Oxford University.

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