Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions Reading Diary

Please read the instruction and the rubric carefully, and make sure to meet all the standards. Answers receiving full credit tend to be between 350 and 750 words in length (per question) Average 500 words per question. You can write a little less on thirty points question. It’s up to you. Quality is the most important.

There are two required book, one is Ariely, Dan. 2010. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Revised and Expanded Edition). HarperCollins.* Another is Wheelan, Charles. 2013. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. W.W. Norton Company. These two books are attached.

Reading Range:

Ariely The Cycle of Distrust The Context of Our Character Part I (Chapter 11) The Context of Our Character Part II (Chapter 12) Beer and Free Lunches (Chapter 13)

Wheelan

• Chapters 11-13

• Conclusion

Q1: Dishonesty and the Future of Humankind [40 points]

Do Ariely’s findings about dishonesty make you overall optimistic or pessimistic about human nature and society? On one hand, he finds that people can be tempted to cheat and steal on a small scale pretty easily. On the other hand, he finds that there is often a limit to the extent to which they do so. And yet he also finds that we are even more likely to steal, and to a greater extent, when tempted by something that isn’t cash, which is increasingly the case. And Ariely offers very little advice as to how to curb these propensities. So are we all doomed to endlessly take advantage of one another, or do Ariely’s studies give us reason to hope that we could structure our society in such a way that we’re generally on good behavior? What can you think of that might serve as a solution to our propensities toward dishonesty?

Q2: You’re Now Ariely [40 points]

Now that you’ve had the opportunity to read about a number of Ariely’s experimental designs, choose one of his studies and think about how it might be conducted differently. That is, take one of Ariely’s ideas about passion, marketing and consumer behavior, social justice and deviance, or irrationality in general, and develop your own experimental design to test the behavioral mechanisms that Ariely seems to find in his respective study. How will you establish a control group and a treatment group? What will the treatment be? How will you measure the behavior of your subjects? How will you know that you have isolated the effects of your treatment and can rule out other potential factors? Would you predict that your findings will match those of Ariely’s study, or might they contradict Ariely’s findings?

Q3: The Power and Perils of Statistics [30 points]

In your opinion, wherein lies the greatest potential benefit of statistical inference? That is, are the greatest advances and gains to be made within the field of medicine, economics, or some other field? Why this field? Name at least one specific benefit that your chosen field might bring in the near future with the help of statistics, and precisely how statistics can help. Next, wherein lies the greatest danger of the abuse of statistical inference? That is, in what field would such abuse have the worst consequences? (This may be either the same field whose potential advances you’ve already discussed, or a different field.) Again, why this field? Name a specific possible abuse of statistics that you think could lead the field’s research astray in such a way as to have such consequences.

Q4: Programmatic Self-Evaluation [40 points]

Think about the kinds of program evaluations that would relate to your life, the comparisons that might be made between you as you are now and certain counterfactuals in which one of your characteristics is changed. For example, you are most likely seeking a college degree, but how would certain ‘dependent variables’ – like your life expectancy or your likely wealth at age 65 – be changed if you weren’t? Wheelan touches on this example, so come up with two different characteristics of your own life (ideally, the outcomes of some of the more important decisions

that you’ve made in the past, like the decision to seek a degree), and imagine yourself without each of these characteristics (one at a time, of course, so as to isolate the effects of each). Don’t worry about how you would design a test of the effects of each characteristic – each ‘treatment’ – but think about what these effects might be. What might the significant differences be between yourself and each of your two counterfactuals, in terms of things like long-term health, long-term earnings, long-term happiness, etc.? For each of your two comparisons, make two suggestions as to what the ‘treatment effects’ of your two real-life characteristics might be. (You probably won’t be able to be very precise, but that’s okay.)

Comparing Personal vs. Market Value Discussion Questions

Please read the instruction and the rubric carefully, and make sure to meet all the standards. Answers receiving full credit tend to be between 350 and 750 words in length (per question) Average 500 words per question.

There are two required book, one is Ariely, Dan. 2010. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Revised and Expanded Edition). HarperCollins.* Another is Wheelan, Charles. 2013. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. W.W. Norton Company. These two books are attached.

Reading Range:

Ariely (Chapter 7-10) The High Price of Ownership Keeping Doors Open The Effect of Expectations The Power of Price

Wheelan

• Chapters 7-10

Q1: Comparing Personal vs. Market Value [40 points]

Think of something that you own and are especially pleased to own, like your most comfortable recliner or sofa, your most stylish piece of clothing, or the bicycle that has accompanied you on so many adventures and pleasure rides. How much would you hope to get for this item if you were to sell it? Next, find something comparable (and comparably old or worn) being advertised online (for example, on eBay or Craigslist). How does the price of this item compare to your asking price? Do you think that the price is fair? That is, would you buy the item for that price? Is the seller an individual or a business? Granted that this isn’t nearly as rigorous as the kind of experiments that Ariely describes, what would you conclude about “the price of ownership,” based on what you have found, and how do your findings compare to Ariely’s?

Q2: Balancing the Effect of Expectations [30 points]

How do you feel about the overall role of suggestion, expectation, and the placebo effect in our lives? On one hand, Ariely points to some of the ways in which these can color our judgment and cause us to make bad decisions. On the other hand, he also points to some of the ways in which they can color our judgment for the better, making food taste better, making music sound better, and even making us feel better physically. To what extent, then, is irrationality harmful, and to what extent beneficial? Is it a worthy goal to want to eradicate all irrationality, even in its occasional benefits? Is a firm grasp of reality and rationality more important than the perceived quality of our food, music, and health? Or do we need a bit of irrationality in our lives, because certain parts of life would be less enjoyable without it? Finally, can we sharpen our rationality in some areas (where rationality is beneficial) while being irrational in others (where irrationality is beneficial), or are we bound to go more or less all the way in either direction?

Q3: Poll Analysis [40 points]

Investigate the validity of a poll for yourself, using what Wheelan has taught us about these instruments’ potential biases. Start by finding a recently published poll online. (If you don’t frequent news websites or have a particular issue in mind, an easy way to find a recent poll is to go to a website like gallup.com, or you can Google something like “new york times poll,” “washington post poll,” “cnn poll,” etc.) State what poll you’re investigating, who carried it out and when, and where it can be found online (with a specific URL). Next, find and read the description of the poll’s methodology, and summarize the sampling methods used to collect the data. Then skim the poll’s questions and evaluate how well some of the more interesting questions avoid bias through their wording. Give three examples, either of bad choices of wording, or of good choices where different wording might have produced biased answers. Finally, evaluate the overall validity of the poll. Does the sampling method seem like it provides a sample representative of the respective population? Are the questions asked in such a way as to promote honest and accurate answers?

Q4: Statistics, the Breakfast of Champions [40 points]

Imagine that you’ve just collected a bunch of data on college students, particularly their eating habits and their performance in school. Because of all that you’ve learned from Wheelan, your sampling and measurement methods are flawless, so now you’re ready to do some hypothesis testing. You’re convinced that college students who eat Wheaties breakfast cereal (the “breakfast of champions”) get better grades than those who do not eat Wheaties. Beyond that, you believe that the more Wheaties a given student eats, the better his or her grades will be. Describe and explain the process of carrying out your test of this hypothesis, step by step, beginning with a null hypothesis and finally stating your findings. (Make up the needed unknown statistics if it makes it easier to describe and explain the process.)

ISS305 MSU Market vs Social Norms & Day to Day Probability Questions

Please answer the following questions:

Q1: Market vs. Social Norms

Think about the ways in which Ariely’s discussion of social norms and market norms applies to

your day-to-day life. Describe an example of a relationship that you share with someone that is

governed by social norms, and describe one that is governed by market norms. How do the two

compare? That is, how do you behave in each relationship, and how does the other person

behave toward you? Try to describe how each relationship makes you feel, in terms of your

connection to the other person. How would each relationship change if you were to switch from

one set of norms to the other, trying to apply social norms to the market-norms relationship and

market norms to the social-norms relationship?

Q2: Your Dr. Jekyll vs. Mr. Hyde

Without getting too cynical or sinister, think about Ariely’s conclusion that we all have within us

both a ‘Dr. Jekyll’ and a ‘Mr. Hyde’. In your experience with the various types of passion

(whether through your own passionate states or those of the people you know), would you agree

that we are generally susceptible to wild swings from being mild-mannered and sober-minded to

being uninhibited and even morally irresponsible? (Try not to be self-incriminating, or too

graphic, if you feel the need to share any account of your ‘wild side’.) Can you imagine that you

might not even know what your thoughts and inclinations might be when you are in a passionate

state, or do you think that you know yourself – both sides of yourself – better than that? Would

you characterize either state as ‘the real you’? If so, which? And why? Or do Ariely’s findings

make you wonder whether any of us is, at bottom, either a ‘Dr. Jekyll’ or a ‘Mr. Hyde’, or

whether we are inseparably both?

Q3: Procrastination and You

How might Ariely’s insights into procrastination help you to achieve your long-term goals? Think

of two long-term goals that you haven’t yet met but might have met by now had you done

something differently. What are these goals, and why are they important to you? What has so far

gotten in the way of achieving them? What might you do to break this cycle of procrastination?

That is, what kinds of incentives might you give yourself to make real progress toward your goals

and finally achieve them?

Q4: Day-to-Day Probability

Wheelan’s discussions of probability and its abuses seem to reflect something that Ariely ought to

agree with: as much sense as probability makes, and as much as it impacts our lives each day, we

don’t seem to think in terms of probability as much as we ought to in order to be rational, and

when we do we’re not all that good at it. Take, for example, the Monty Hall problem: why didn’t

everybody on Let’s Make a Deal switch doors? And when five coin flips in a row give us tails, why

do we suddenly forget that the probability of heads on the next flip is still 0.5? For the next

couple of days, try to identify the situations in your life in which you (or someone around you)

would do well to consider the probability of some event or another (other than the classic cases of

card games, dice-rolling, coin-flips, and the oh-so-common choice between three doors). Keep a

log of these situations, and once you have done so think about how your consideration of

probability might have affected your decision-making in two or three of these situations. Would

you have acted differently? Would it have made much of a difference in outcome? Do you think

that you could condition yourself to better appreciate probability on the spot – at least in this

situation, now that you’ve thought about it – or do you think that there’s just something about

our brains that causes us to sometimes overlook probability at the risk of being irrational? If the

latter, what could this be?

Rubric is also provided.

Please answer each question no less than 400 words.

Naked Statistics Stripping The Dread From The Data

summarize the chapter 5 and 5 1/2 in 300 words. You dont have to read the whole chapter, just make sure the summary meets the requirement.

Please write this summary in three paragraphs. The first paragraph will summarize the context/story discussed in the chapter, the second paragraph will discuss the key statistical concepts introduced in the 2 chapter, and, in the third paragraph, you can provide examples how you see the statistical concepts introduced in the chapter being used in your surroundings

Summary of Naked Statistics

Please wirte the summary in three paragraphs. The first paragraph will summarize the context/story discussed in the chapter, the second paragraph will discuss the key statistical concepts introduced in the chapter, and, in the third paragraph, you can provide examples how you see the statistical concepts introduced in the chapter being used in your surroundings.

Here is link of the book

https://books.google.com/books/about/Naked_Statist… Please read the first chapter: What’s the point?

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