Ralph KeeneyRalph Keeney, a decision analyst at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, uses decision sciences to give “practical and usable advice” to help people make decisions, from lifestyle choices to management strategies.
Keeney claims that good decisions can even cheat death. A recent study of his, as reported in Wired, argued that 55 percent of U.S. deaths among people aged 15 to 64 were due to risky lifestyle choices, compared to just 5 percent a century ago. Why? Because, Keeney claims, most people are really bad at doing cost-benefit calculations. (Related: as Gary Becker once wrote, all deaths are, to some degree, suicides.)
Before coming to Duke, Keeney taught at M.I.T. and U.S.C., and was a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria; he also founded a decision- and risk-analysis group at a geotechnical and environmental consulting firm. His most recent book, co-authored with John Hammond and Howard Raiffa, is Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Life Decisions.
Keeney has agreed to take your questions about decision-making, so fire away in the comments section below. As with past Q&A’s, we’ll post Keeney’s answers here in short course.
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Dear Professor Dubner,
I’m a third year college student studying abroad at Oxford. Decision making has always been a struggle for me. I like to think of myself as hardworking and ambitious, but I have this bad habit of second guessing myself. I feel like I could accomplish so much more if I had the discipline to commit to my choices. Do you think that college should be a time for exploration and finding yourself, or for making a simple choice and running with it.
Best regards,
A
What graduate schools or programs of study do you recommend for someone who is interested in furthering our knowledge of how people should be conducting decision making, non-scientific epistemology, and thought.
How can I avoid paralysis by analysis?
At what point do you know that you have enough information to make a rational decision?
Is there really wisdom in the crowds? Do crowds make good decisions?
Should we allow the wisdom of crowds to define our course of action with respect to hot button issues like global warming? Or is dissent by a smaller crowd worth considering?
%5 a century ago? How do you figure? Here is the 1925
death record in NYC. Okay not a century quite, but 84 years ago. I can’t see the 5%. NYC keeps very good figures for this stuff.
6,223 New York City Violent Deaths in 1925
1272 Automobile Accidents 20.44%
994 Suicides 15.97%
925 Falls from high places 14.86%
631 Gas 10.14%
439 Burns 7.05%
416 Drowning (Ferrys?) 6.68%
356 Homicides 5.72%
343 Trucks 5.51%
167 Taxicabs 2.68%
140 Accidental Poisoning 2.25%
117 Collisions (Streetcars?) 1.88%
95 Falling objects 1.53%
95 Swimming 1.53%
87 Elevators 1.40%
56 Subways and El Trains 0.90%
52 Railroad Trains 0.84%
14 Accidental Shooting 0.22%
11 Capsizing Boats 0.18%
6 Baseball 0.10%
5 Kicked by horses 0.08%
1 Football 0.02%
1 Aeroplane 0.02%
@Eric M. Jones – you’re only looking at “violent deaths.” Presumably a small minority of all deaths.
Ralph, my question is this. Presumably there is both an art and a science to your method of decision making. On the science side, when you model different outcomes, to determine how comparatively good or bad they all are, you have to attach some kind of value to every outcome.
How do you do that? How would you value something like a marriage, or something similarly personal and subjective? Even an uncannily analytical clent wouldn’t be able to attach a numberical index to something like that, right?
Thanks,
Dave
I dont know if I should be asking this question here, but let me give it a try…
Well I am a Economics Master’s candidate at a nice Institute in India. Though I would love to be involved in Research and Academia, I have few good professional career choices at my disposal (like opting to work in a nbfc, bfsi through college placements), which seems rational to my parents at my age (26 years). I also had few cold experience in professional life due to my independent working style. My research Interest lies in finance, behavioral finance, strategy etc.
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So I would like to ask, whether its good for me to ignore my parents advice now and try to get a scholarship/ funding for my PhD (a little tough according to my profile) or have experience and few professional certificates (Eg CFA, CQF etc) and try for Graduate admissions after 2 to 3 years. That goes with all peripheral issues like marriage, relocating away from my parents after 2-3 years, kids may be
I am confused. Kindly reply if my question qualify.
Thanks for the forum in any case.
I’ve been married for over 8 years and I love my wife very much. I’ve known her for 10 years and I’ve noticed that each year (after getting married and after each kid) the quantity of our bedroom activities has an inverse relationship to the number of years we’ve been married. My demand for activity has stayed the same as other factors have remained constant (our heights, weights, visual appearances, etc). I’m assuming it’s a decision on her side which is leading to the decrease in bedroom activities. What are the key factors that lead to this decision and what factors can best influence a change in trend?