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Critical Thinking: Statistical Reasoning and Intuitive Judgment

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Life is fundamentally uncertain. We do not know whether it will rain, whether the market will go up or down, whether our unhealthy eating choices will have serious consequences, or whether terrorists will strike our city. To make matters worse, we also lack a tried and true procedure for evaluating the likelihood of such events. Yet we are required to make decisions great and small that depend on these events. In the absence of certainty or an objective procedure for estimating probabilities, we must rely on our own reasoning, which a great deal of research has shown to be less rational than we would like to believe.



In Critical Thinking, Varda Liberman and Amos Tversky examine how we make judgments under uncertainty and explain how various biases can distort our consideration of evidence. Using everyday examples, they detail how to examine data and their implications with the goal of helping readers improve their intuitive reasoning and judgment. From the courtroom to the basketball court, cholesterol count to the existence of the supernatural, Liberman and Tversky explore the fundamental insights of probability, causal relationships, and making inferences from samples. They delve into the psychology of judgment, explaining why first impressions are often wrong and correct answers go against our intuitions. Originally written in Hebrew and published by the Open University in 1996, Critical Thinking is an essential guide for students and interested readers alike that teaches us to become more critical readers and consumers of information.

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Published August 14, 2018

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About the author

Amos Tversky

22 books185 followers
Amos Nathan Tversky (Hebrew: עמוס טברסקי‎; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a student of cognitive science, a collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement. He was co-author of a three-volume treatise, Foundations of Measurement (recently reprinted). His early work with Kahneman focused on the psychology of prediction and probability judgment. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman worked together to develop prospect theory, which aims to explain irrational human economic choices and is considered one of the seminal works of behavioral economics. Six years after Tversky's death, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for the work he did in collaboration with Amos Tversky.[1] (The prize is not awarded posthumously.) Kahneman told The New York Times in an interview soon after receiving the honor: "I feel it is a joint prize. We were twinned for more than a decade."[2] Tversky also collaborated with Thomas Gilovich, Itamar Simonson, Paul Slovic and Richard Thaler in several papers.

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