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Doğan Kökdemir - ISLE 465 - Judgment and Decision Making |
| ISLE 465 – Judgment and Decision Making Doç. Dr. Doğan Kökdemir dogan@kokdemir.info Do you think that you are rational? Numerous social psychological research show the opposite, people make lots of cognitive biases and errors in judgment and decision making processes. Most of the time - if not always - we use some short - cut strategies so called heuristics instead of rational, step by step decision making procedures. Emotions, environmental constraints, our past experiences and future expectations mediate daily and expert judgments and decision making. Even experts do fail to make rational decisions. Rationality is an important concept that will be discussed in the course. There is no single definition of rationality. Economists, engineers, medical doctors, military personnel, and social psychologist defined it differently. The purpose of ISLE 465 Judgment and Decision Making course is to inform students about the mechanisms underlying judgment and decision making. Students are going to be asked to perform short projects about this topic and show their reasoning abilities. Although this course is not based on mathematical theories, simple and intermediate level of statistical knowledge is necessary (especially theories of probability, correlation and regression). Furthermore, decision making under special uncertainties, such as risky situations and so called crises is the major topics that are going to be discussed in lectures. Students: want to make both correct and fast decisions (because rational decision making strategies are very slow to compete with other individuals) want to make better decisions because they are graduating from the university (better DM strategies are needed for the “real life” do not want to feel regret after their decisions want to reach decisions that they wish the most (without considering the consequences) do not want be indifferent when confronting by the alternatives (Is reaching a decision better than no decision?) prefer to make decisions in groups rather than as themselves prefer to make decisions for others to themselves (because the former is much easy). There is no guarantee that you would cope well with uncertainties above. :) Check out course syllabus for further information. |
(c) 2005 Doğan Kökdemir, Last updated: 21.05.2009 |