Knowledge And Decisions

Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1541602757
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 607

Book Description
With a new preface by the author, this reissue of Thomas Sowell's classic study of decision making updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Annointed, Sowell, one of America's most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency, but our very freedom because actual knowledge gets replaced by assumptions based on an abstract and elitist social vision f what ought to be.Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a ”landmark work” and selected for this prize ”because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government.” In announcing the award, the center acclaimed Sowell, whose ”contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [his] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant.”

Knowledge And Decisions

Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541602757
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 607

Intelligent Decision Support Methods

Author: Vasant Dhar
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
This is a comprehensive explanation of how powerful technologies work in business, using a pragmatic business approach in describing when and how they should be used. Detailed case studies are provided in management information systems, information systems, computer science, and management. The text focuses on modeling techniques such as rules, case-based reasoning, fuzzy logic, neural nets, genetic algorhithms and machine learning.

Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions

Author: David A. Blackwell
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486150895
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
Evaluating statistical procedures through decision and game theory, as first proposed by Neyman and Pearson and extended by Wald, is the goal of this problem-oriented text in mathematical statistics. First-year graduate students in statistics and other students with a background in statistical theory and advanced calculus will find a rigorous, thorough presentation of statistical decision theory treated as a special case of game theory. The work of Borel, von Neumann, and Morgenstern in game theory, of prime importance to decision theory, is covered in its relevant aspects: reduction of games to normal forms, the minimax theorem, and the utility theorem. With this introduction, Blackwell and Professor Girshick look at: Values and Optimal Strategies in Games; General Structure of Statistical Games; Utility and Principles of Choice; Classes of Optimal Strategies; Fixed Sample-Size Games with Finite Ω and with Finite A; Sufficient Statistics and the Invariance Principle; Sequential Games; Bayes and Minimax Sequential Procedures; Estimation; and Comparison of Experiments. A few topics not directly applicable to statistics, such as perfect information theory, are also discussed. Prerequisites for full understanding of the procedures in this book include knowledge of elementary analysis, and some familiarity with matrices, determinants, and linear dependence. For purposes of formal development, only discrete distributions are used, though continuous distributions are employed as illustrations. The number and variety of problems presented will be welcomed by all students, computer experts, and others using statistics and game theory. This comprehensive and sophisticated introduction remains one of the strongest and most useful approaches to a field which today touches areas as diverse as gambling and particle physics.

Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain

Author: Paul W. Glimcher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262303620
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Book Description
In this provocative book, Paul Glimcher argues that economic theory may provide an alternative to the classical Cartesian model of the brain and behavior. Glimcher argues that Cartesian dualism operates from the false premise that the reflex is able to describe behavior in the real world that animals inhabit. A mathematically rich cognitive theory, he claims, could solve the most difficult problems that any environment could present, eliminating the need for dualism by eliminating the need for a reflex theory. Such a mathematically rigorous description of the neural processes that connect sensation and action, he explains, will have its roots in microeconomic theory. Economic theory allows physiologists to define both the optimal course of action that an animal might select and a mathematical route by which that optimal solution can be derived. Glimcher outlines what an economics-based cognitive model might look like and how one would begin to test it empirically. Along the way, he presents a fascinating history of neuroscience. He also discusses related questions about determinism, free will, and the stochastic nature of complex behavior.

Sources of Power

Author: Gary A. Klein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262611466
Category : Decision making
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
An overview of naturalistic decision making, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced.

Identification for Prediction and Decision

Author: Charles F. Manski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674033665
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
This book is a full-scale exposition of Charles Manski's new methodology for analyzing empirical questions in the social sciences. He recommends that researchers first ask what can be learned from data alone, and then ask what can be learned when data are combined with credible weak assumptions. Inferences predicated on weak assumptions, he argues, can achieve wide consensus, while ones that require strong assumptions almost inevitably are subject to sharp disagreements. Building on the foundation laid in the author's Identification Problems in the Social Sciences (Harvard, 1995), the book's fifteen chapters are organized in three parts. Part I studies prediction with missing or otherwise incomplete data. Part II concerns the analysis of treatment response, which aims to predict outcomes when alternative treatment rules are applied to a population. Part III studies prediction of choice behavior. Each chapter juxtaposes developments of methodology with empirical or numerical illustrations. The book employs a simple notation and mathematical apparatus, using only basic elements of probability theory.

Ethnic America

Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786723157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
This classic work by the distinguished economist traces the history of nine American ethnic groups -- the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Chinese, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans.

Conquests and Cultures

Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher:
ISBN: 0786723009
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
This book is the culmination of 15 years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice, as well as on other travels in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and around the Pacific rim. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations. Focusing on four major cultural areas(that of the British, the Africans (including the African diaspora), the Slavs of Eastern Europe, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere--Conquests and Cultures reveals patterns that encompass not only these peoples but others and help explain the role of cultural evolution in economic, social, and political development.

Educational Goods

Author: Harry Brighouse
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022651417X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
This book, jointly authored by two distinguished philosophers and two prominent social scientists, has an ambitious aim: to improve decision-making in education policy. First they dive into the goals of education policy and explain the terms "educational goods" and "childhood goods," adding precision and clarity to the discussion of the distributive values that are essential for good decision-making about education. Then they provide a framework for individual decision-makers that enables them to combine values and evidence in the evaluation of educational policy options. Finally they delve into the particular policy issues of school finance, school accountability, and school choice, and they show how decision makers might approach them in the light of this decision-making framework. The authors are not advocated particular policy choices, however. The focus instead is a smart framework that will make it easier for policymakers (and readers) to identify and think through what they disagree with others about.