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Has anyone in this space read "Could your decision-making skills use some honing? Authors offer smart approach headlined in the Source on Tuesday, October 26 and could you tell us more about fast-and-frugal heuristics - the underlying strategy promoted by the authors?

The Source article is a good read, Mitch. I like the cited Smart Management book cover image. It starts with fuzzy entangled circles that yield to a single circle when things become clear – when management direction becomes clear. It's like the fuzzy quantum state waves that collapse into a single particle when measured (The Quantum World).

As I see it (in Uncertainty and Risk), The highest types of uncertainties are heuristics and rules-of-thumb used by individuals and groups to make judgement when no firm information is available.

And uncertainty (in The World of Numbers and Chances), Uncertainty is simply the lack of surety or absolute confidence in something.

Heuristics, uncertainty and risk are not mutually exclusive. Risk is related to uncertainty via the probability of occurrence of an uncertain but probable event.

Heuristics has its uses and abuses:

Whose heuristics is it? Obviously, an experienced person by accumulating many years of experiences develop valuable intuition on certain areas of his or her works in comparison to a relatively inexperienced person. Therefore, his or her heuristics carries lots of weight, but no true proponent of heuristics could claim that his or her opinion or decision is final, just based on heuristics. Rather, any such opinion is a direction setter asking for follow-ups to finalize things. If the heuristics is right – it saves time and cost, if not, it may end up being a waste.

In the East, at the world's second earliest university at Nalanda (5^th to 12^th century CE) a theory of completion of knowledge is developed (highlighted in The Quantum World). It says knowledge is complete through the processes of: anumana (concept or idea) → pratyaka (analytical rationalizing of the idea) → pramana (actual verification of the idea). This theory, whether we realize or not, basically forms the foundation of any modern investigation and decision.

Heuristics about what? Again, in a similar vein one can see that – a heuristics in the case of a relatively small project or at a preliminary level of a large project may carry lots of weight than others. No serious management decision of a large project can rely entirely on heuristics – this is just the common sense. This is because the variables and conditions of some experiences – may not exactly corroborate with another.

As one can understand – the risk associated with the probable failure of a such project could be staggering. And a decision based on heuristics alone can neither be justified nor defended.

Dilip

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Dr. Dilip K Barua, Ph.D

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This review prompted me to dig deeper into the academic work behind this book. Fast-and-frugal heuristics are decision strategies based on the idea that accurate decisions can be made without complex models or high effort. The trap they seek to avoid is over-analysis, with inherent time and cost implications and possibly poorer decisions. This application of heuristics for improved decision-making contrasts the seminal work on decision-making by Kahneman and Tversky, who showed that cognitive heuristics used in decision-making can lead to biases and errors. Like many things, the right approach depends on the circumstances, and one needs many tools in one's toolbox.

This paper is a good resource for people like me who are not ready to pay $45 for the book.