Decision Science News

THE VALUE OF NOT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS

As Shane Frederick has noted, if you say “A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much is the ball?”, you will notice that the vast majority of your friends will say “10 cents” instead of the correct “5 cents”, because they don’t pay attention to the “more than the ball” bit. They assume you mean that the bat costs a buck.

But Decision Science News would like to pause and say a few words in defense of not listening to exactly what is said. What if we took instructions literally? If we did, when we got emails from British Airways saying “Your British Airways flight is moving to Heathrow Terminal 3” as their subject, we would actually believe that our recently booked British Airways flight (to Geneva) was moving to Heathrow Terminal 3. And we’d be wrong.

If we then went on to read that the change only affects flights to Barcelona, Nice, and three other cities where we are NOT going, we would be completely perplexed, thinking “How can my flight be moving and not moving at once? It’s impossible!” We’d panic. We’d call BA. But we don’t do any of that. We just shake our heads and think “Worst … subject line … ever”.

As Decision Science News reflects and tries to find cases in which it pays to be perfectly literal, it can’t. Even when dealing with computers, even when reading the output of statistical routines, one needs regularly to think “Ok, SAS (or R or STATA or SPSS) you say that, but we both know you don’t mean that.”

ALL ABOUT REVOLUTION COMPUTING’S R DISTRIBUTION

Decision Science News was intrigued by a company called REvolution Computing that got some attention of late for spinning their own mix of the R language for statistical computing and giving it away for free. So DSN asked to interview them to see what it’s all about

Decision Science News: So who are you guys and what is your scientific background?

REvolution: Well, at this point our team has grown and we have about 30 employees with diverse backgrounds, from bioinformatics to finance to core statistics and software engineering. However when we got started with REvolution, we were a group that had tremendous experience with high performance computing and building production software. Our first application with R was something called ParallelR , which enables users of R to seamlessly benefit from optimized performance by automatically running on multiple cores, servers, and clusters (we even have a cloud-based deployment). Our team today is a combination of employees and an extended community, from R community participants, to package developers, to researchers and related consultants.

Decision Science News: how did you get started working with R professionally?

REvolution: Traditionally our customers came to us for parallel computing solutions based in languages like C, Fortran, or Java. More and more we started to see pull from our customers toward scripting languages, and R in particular. Some of our pharma partners particularly were compelled by the proposition of optimizing the performance of R, and many of our first references are related to those applications (gene expression, classification, etc. [case study])

Decision Science News: What’s so great about your R compared to the regular download?

REvolution: Well, we’re not competing with the “regular” download – we actively collaborate with the core team, and utilize the codebase. What we have done is on several fronts. First, we have added capability and functionality related to optimization and high performance. Second, we are adding specific support for the 64-bit Windows platforms (and other more obscure OS distributions). Third, we are actively working on an IDE, large data handling, and other interesting capabilities (stay tuned!).

In addition to these aspects, we have packaged REvolution R into a commercially supported distribution around which we also provide training and consulting services. It’s a fully supported product in the same spirit as, say, RedHat Linux.

Decision Science News: Is there any risk that getting ‘locked in’ to your distribution of R? What if your distribution goes away, will our code still run on vanilla R?

REvolution: We prefer to say “mandatory customer loyalty” than lock-in. (KIDDING!) Of course, “open source” is a big part of “commercial open source,” and users of REvolution R can run their codebase on vanilla R.

HOW TO MAKE MORE REALISTIC ESTIMATES OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR

The Journal of Consumer Research is getting awfully good at getting articles picked up in the New York Times. The JCR Web site has directed our attention to an article by Robin Tanner and Kurth Carlson that looks people’s forecasts of their own future exercise behavior.

The gist is that when people answer a question like “how often will you exercise next week?”, they reply as if the question were “under ideal circumstances, how often will you exercise next week?”

Of course, most weeks aren’t ideal weeks, so if you are interested in getting a more accurate forecast of your own behavior in the future, it helps to be reminded of this.

So, how to use behavioral science to help yourself? When asked to make a forecast 1) generate an answer under ideal conditions, then 2) generate your forecast. Though you’d think the ‘ideal conditions’ would skew your forecast upwards due to anchoring, it does not. In fact, it causes you to generate more realistic forecasts of your own behavior.

(This reminds me of when I was running a seminar series and the visiting speaker asked me how long it would take to get from Columbia to Penn Station after the talk. I gave him my estimate, which he naturally believed was biased — some decision researchers think that everybody else is biased — and that it wouldn’t give him enough time. He demanded proof. So, I pulled up the train timetables from the MTA website and, sure enough, my estimate not only factored in waiting time and travel time, but also a generous buffer for the late trains. Being a nerd, I’d timed the trip perhaps 30 times and recorded it in my Palm Pilot; I live to make accurate forecasts. I was very close to replying “Dude. Like you, I decision-making biases for a living. I think I can give you a calibrated estimate of a trip I take every day.” But I held my tongue. –Ed).

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/66535891@N00/2701310395/

PASSWORD CHART

Most of us use the same password for many sites. And most of us have thought that it would be a good idea to use different passwords for different sites. But then many of us fear that if we do this, we are tempting fate to forget or lose some of those passwords.

So, many of us have thought about making a different password for each site by combining some part of the site’s name with our standard password. So, for example, if your standard password is mypass123:

Your Gmail password might be mypass123_gmail and
your eBay password might be mypass123_ebay and
your Facebook password might be mypass123_facebook
(or perhaps something a bit less obvious)

This beats using the same password everywhere, but it is kind of clunky.

Along comes password chart. You can give it your standard password and enter the site for which you wish to have a password created. Out pops a much longer and more secure password than you would generate on your own.

The best part is that if you ever forget your strong password, you can go back to password chart, pop in the base password and the site name, and you’ve recovered your secure password. Easy!

Though these are browser-based tools, they do not send your password over the internet. You can even save the code to your local machine and run it offline if you’re doubtful. The code is free and open to inspect.

Here’s another tool that does basically the same thing: http://blog.tetrack.com/2009/02/too-many-passwords/

SUMMER WORKSHOP ON DECISION NEUROSCIENCE

The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and INSEAD will jointly host a Summer Workshop entitled “Decision Neuroscience: How Neuroscience Can Inform Behavioral Decision Making Research – Overview, Methods & Applications”.

The workshop is co-organized by Jim Bettman, Joe Kable, Hilke Plassmann and Carolyn Yoon, and will be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan from August 21-23, 2009.

The aim of the workshop is to provide an introduction to the field of decision neuroscience/neuroeconomics for graduate students interested in neuroscience and behavioral decision making, with a particular focus on those interested in marketing and consumer behavior. The workshop will feature lectures and presentations by top researchers in fields related to decision neuroscience, and will also provide opportunities for networking and discussions among faculty and students.

Applications are due February 23, 2009.

If you’re interested in more information, please see
http://www.bus.umich.edu/Conferences/DecisionNeuroscience

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/jacobkearns/318221213/sizes/m/

ELKE WEBER TO SPEAK IN LONDON JAN 27, 2009

Those who will attend tomorrow’s Economics of Behaviour and Decision Making Seminar Series are in for a treat as Elke Weber, of Columbia University’s Psychology Department and Graduate School of Business, will present “When do we want it? Now! A Query Theory process account of Intertemporal Choice.”

Tuesday January 27th, 2009
Location: Westminster Business School seminar room MR2
Time: 17h30-19h00

Abstract
Psychologists and behavioral economists agree that many of our preferences are constructed, rather than innate or pre-computed and stored. Little research, however, has explored the implications that established facts about human attention and memory have when people marshal evidence for their decisions. This talk provides an introduction to query theory, a psychological process model of preference construction, and uses it to explain a range of phenomena in intertemporal choice, including our impatience when we are asked to delay consumption. Behavioral data in combination with neuroscience evidence (fMRI and TMS) will be provide support for query theory’s assumptions about the processes underlying intertemporal preference construction.

A paper on the theory can be found here.

Londoners who are not hip to the Economics of Behaviour and Decision Making Seminar Series can join the email list by visiting http://tinyurl.com/yvw2sr to opt in. You can easily unsubscribe anytime. Please pass this message on to those who may be interested in joining the email list.

DESIGNING FOR BETTER HEALTH

Richard Thaler writes

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is sponsoring a contest to come up with ideas for improvements in choice architecture, or “nudges”, that can improve health, broadly defined. You can find a description of it on our nudging blog or at http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/designingforbetterhealth

This initiative might be interesting to JDMers at two levels. First, it is a contest to come up with ideas of the sort that JDMers are good at so feel free to enter. Second, the idea of using a contest to generate solutions to societal problems is of interest in and of itself. The prizes for the winners are nominal, $5000, (unlike the X prize, for example), but the Foundation has funds to pour significant resources behind winning ideas. So the idea is that you can get lots of clever people to think about an important problem by dangling a modest bit of fame and fortune and you might come up with something that could change the world. Cool huh?

Read about it on the Nudge blog
Read about it on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation site
Read about it at the Changemakers site

They have some nice tips on designing nudges in the articles How To Nudge and Nudge Your Customers Toward Better Choices.

NEW YORK TIMES STORY ON THE APPEAL OF R

(click to view movie)

It is no secret that Decision Science News is crazy about the R language for statistical computing. Find out why R is so great in this New York Times article. Then start to teach yourself R with our short series of video tutorials.

• Decision Science News R Video Tutorial Number 1
• Decision Science News R Video Tutorial Number 2

Addendum: Check out the hordes of R supporters in this comments of this Freakonomics blog post, correcting an assumption by Ayers that happens to be 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

Animation credit: Friend of Decision Science News Yihui Xie.

JDM TALKS AT THE SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL DECISION MAKING CONFERENCE

The 2008 annual meetings of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) and the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) included a “symposium exchange.” A symposium by SJDM members was presented at SMDM 2008 (Pennsylvania, PA) and a symposium by SMDM members was presented at SJDM 2008 (Chicago, IL). Support for these symposia was provided by the National Science Foundation (grants SES-0817831 and SES-0820329 to Alan Schwartz and J. Sanford Schwartz).

Click here to watch the talks, featuring JDMers Hal Arkes, Benjamin Djulbegovic, Elke Weber, Anirban Basu, Joe Johnson, Leslie John & Valerie Reyna.

Also, if you like things that are animated (and who doesn’t) you may get a kick of participating in this interactive experiment on retirement income by Issac Gonzalez and William Sharpe. Internet Explorer only (I know, I know…).

POSTDOCTORAL OPPORTUNITIES IN BERLIN, BOULDER, AND NYC

If you are like most Decision Science News readers, you have a PhD or are fast on your way to earning one. It only follows that if you are like most Decision Science News readers, you are eligible to apply for a postdoc. Here are a few it’s still not too late to apply for, even on the last day of 2008.

Here’s one in Berlin:

Postdoctoral Fellowships and Visiting Graduate Fellowships in Cognition And Decision Making

The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, under the direction of Gerd Gigerenzer, is seeking applicants for up to 3 two-year Postdoctoral Fellowships (with the possibility of third year) and up to 2 one-year Visiting Graduate Fellowships beginning on or after September 1, 2009, but earlier or later start dates are possible. The Visiting Graduate Fellowships are intended for students currently enrolled in graduate programs.

Candidates should be interested in studying the cognitive mechanisms underlying bounded, social, and ecological rationality in real-world domains. Current and past researchers in our group have had training in psychology, cognitive science, economics, mathematics, biology, and computer science to name but a few. The Center provides excellent resources, including support staff and equipment for conducting experiments and computer simulations, generous travel support for conferences, and, most importantly, the time to think.

For more information about our group and other funding possibilities for graduate students please visit our homepage at www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/forschung/abc/ . The working language of the center is English, and knowledge of German is not necessary for living in Berlin and enjoying the active life and cultural riches of this city. We strongly encourage applications from women, and members of minority groups. The Max Planck Society is committed to employing more disabled individuals and especially encourages them to apply.

Please submit applications (consisting of a cover letter describing research interests, curriculum vitae, up to five reprints, and 3 letters of recommendation) by January 10th, 2009 to ensure consideration. However, applications will be accepted until the positions are filled. The preferred method of submission is a single PDF file for the cover letter and CV, plus PDF copies of the reprints e-mailed to fellowships2009(at)mpib-berlin.mpg.de. Letters of recommendation and questions can be emailed to the same address. Under exceptional circumstances applications can be mailed to Ms. Wiebke Moeller, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany.

Here’s one at Colorado

University of Colorado
Leeds School of Business and Department of Psychology
Research Associate

The University of Colorado at Boulder anticipates hiring a research associate in a new interdisciplinary Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making. Basic research in judgment and decision making, psychology, consumer research, and behavioral economics can inform our understanding of financial decisions such as choosing a mortgage, saving for retirement, decumulating savings, using credit cards, and paying for health care. The Center will conduct basic research and more applied work to inform public policy.

The research associate position would be for two-years, with a start date of August 1, 2009. The associate will conduct research with Professor John Lynch in the Leeds School of Business and Professor Leaf Van Boven in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado. Van Boven is co-Director of the Judgment, Emotion, Decision, and Intuition (JEDI) lab and Director of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy. Lynch (coming to CU from Duke University) studies consumer decision-making. Please see these websites for descriptions of their ongoing research programs:

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/VanBoven/Home.html

http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/%7Ejglynch/bio/articles.htm

The ideal candidate would be an accomplished psychology PhD who has demonstrated research and teaching abilities and who is interested in seeking a faculty position in consumer research and marketing. Many leading Marketing departments hire researchers with Psychology PhDs whose work has implications for consumer behavior. They seek scholars who can publish in the top journals both in marketing / consumer research and allied basic disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive psychology, and judgment and decision making. Marketing departments also require that these scholars demonstrate that they can teach effectively in a business school setting.

This position is designed to help the scholar achieve these interdisciplinary goals. In conjunction with this research associate appointment, the appointee will also hold a 10% instructor appointment and will be expected to teach one undergraduate course per year in the Leeds School of Business under John Lynch’s supervision. The research associate will work in labs in both psychology and business; collaborate on research aimed at journals in both psychology and consumer research.

This position is open to candidates with behavioral research experience, data analysis and modeling skills, and training in judgment and decision making, social psychology, cognitive psychology, or a related discipline, who have recently earned a PhD or who are expecting their doctorate in by July 2009, on a topic relevant to the research programs of Lynch and Van Boven and to issues in financial decision making, broadly defined. Salary is competitive.

Applications (cover letter, vita, two letters of recommendation, pdfs of three research papers) should be submitted on line to https://www.jobsatcu.com/. Click on Search Postings and enter the job posting number 806125. In your cover letter, please describe your research expertise, data analysis skills, and computer skills.

Penultimately, Columbia

Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University Post-Doctoral Researcher

The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), is seeking an outstanding researcher for a Post-Doctoral Researcher position starting in September, 2009. CRED studies individual and group decision making under climate uncertainty and decision making in the face of environmental risk. We are an interdisciplinary center conducting laboratory and field research in the United States and around the world, involving collaboration between researchers (economists, anthropologists, psychologists, hydrologists, climate scientists, etc) and decision makers (water managers, farmers, etc.). CRED is affiliated with Columbia’s Earth Institute and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP). This appointment will be in Columbia’s Psychology Department. For more information please visit: www.cred.columbia.edu

The post-doctoral researcher will report to the center’s co-directors David H. Krantz and Elke U. Weber and will collaborate with other center researchers, post-docs, and graduate students across disciplines.

The post-doc will conduct research on temporal discounting of social goals. More specifically, this project looks at how discount rates vary across different goal categories (money, health, safely, belonging, status, well being of others, environment) in order to analyze the long-term benefits of public policies relating to health, safety, and environment. The incumbent will be responsible for planning and carrying out lab research, field studies, and analysis, including development of methods for measuring temporal discount factors, establishment of baseline effects, quantitative comparison of discount rates for a variety of social and economic goals; analyses of both general pattern of responses, as well as individual and cultural differences. He/She we will be expected to employ a combination of distribution games, social dilemmas, and hypothetical scenarios about real life social, monetary and environmental outcomes. Aside from basic research, our work is also concerned with practical applications in policy and other real-world decision contexts. In an effort to apply theory and findings to a real socio-temporal dilemma, the post-doc will work on an energy conservation field study.

Other duties include contribution to other ongoing center projects; grant proposal writing; preparation of and participation in CRED workshops; drafting reports and papers for publication.

Required qualifications:
* Ph.D. in psychology (social, cognitive), behavioral economics, decision sciences, or other relevant discipline.
* Familiarity with theory of decision making in social and group contexts.
* Strong interest in climate and/or environmental science.
* Skilled in the use of laboratory-based experiments involving multi-player decisions and familiarity with various forms of field work (survey and interview techniques)
* Experience working as a member of interdisciplinary teams.
* Excellent skills in use of statistical software package (SPSS, R, STATA, SAS, or equivalent)
* Proficiency in computer programming (experimental games and online surveys).

Preferred qualifications:
* Publications
* Grant writing experience

Duration: This is a one-year position with possibility of renewal for a
second year conditional on performance and funding.

Please submit applications electronically to Jenn Logg at: jl3371 at columbia.edu

Applications should include the following: Cover letter, CV, 2 publications or writing samples, 2 recommendation letters (to be submitted directly by references)

And yet another at Columbia, once held by yours truly …

Columbia University’s Center for the Decision Sciences (CDS) anticipates hiring a postdoctoral fellow to serve as Associate Director for a period of a minimum of one year, renewable for one or two more years, with a start date of June or July 2009.

The Associate Director will carry out research, administer the Center and run the CDS Online Virtual Laboratory server. S/he should have a reasonable level of computer sophistication.

The main responsibility will be to carry out research related to cognition and memory with an emphasis on decision making and the construction of preferences across the lifespan, under the supervision of Professors Eric Johnson, Elke Weber, and Yaakov Stern. This position is open to candidates with behavioral research experience, data analysis and modeling skills, and training in cognitive psychology or a related discipline, who have recently earned their PhD or who are expecting their doctorate in 2009, on a topic relevant to the psychology of decision making broadly defined. Training in neuropsychology as well as neuroscience and fMRI research would be a particularly valuable skill. Additionally experience with health- and cognitive function screening of older adults and experience with on-line research is also a plus.

The candidate should be comfortable running a Linux Web server as well as coding HTML and dynamic scripting languages such as PHP and JavaScript. Experience with SQL, databases, SAS and lightweight UNIX systems administration and security is very much recommended but not essential.

To apply, please send a CV, two letters of recommendation, reprints of published papers, and a cover letter describing your research interests. In your cover letter, please describe your research expertise, data analysis and modeling skills, neuropsychological and neuroscience skills, and computer skills (including any experience with online research).

Review of applications will start December 15 and continue until the position is filled. Electronic applications (all parts as attachments to a single email) should be submitted to Amy Krosch, ak2562 at columbia.edu.