Probability, Decision Making, The Planet, and You


Framing

Reframing Decisions

Note that these examples all offer the possibility of treating money as freely transferable, and thus reframing an option in terms of the amount of money lost or saved ($35 saved by not attending the concert, or $5 saved by making an extra effort). Subtracting, to get amounts saved or lost, is an important part of this reframing strategy; another important part is refusal to segregate your own money into separate mental accounts.

However, there are some situations in which it is important to maintain separate accounts and to avoid easy transfers. Devices that commit one to long-term savings are sometimes necessary to accomplish long-term goals. Separate mental accounts are the antecedents of separate savings accounts that can be important. Thus, it is necessary to ask, in each case, whether some important goal is being served by resisting transfers of funds, or whether the separate mental accounts (as for calculators and leather jackets) are fairly arbitrary and should be overridden to reframe a problem.

 

 

Statistics and the Planet

Relative frequency

Averages

Law of large numbers

Descriptors: mode(s), terciles, quartiles,...

Sampling or measurement error

Systmatic error


Decisions and the Planet

Goals and resources

Accounting and fungibility

Choices

Opportunity costs

Framing

Catastrophic loss


Graphs and the Planet

Bar Graphs for categories

Breaks and histograms

Spinners

Tail graphs: cdf and exceedance


Insure Yourself and The World

Insurance

Tradeoffs


Resources

 

Library of Problems