Special Counsel for Decision-Makers: 04/01/2008

Friday, April 18, 2008

Questions for Decision-Makers

Over the past years I have asked my colleagues many questions about decision-making. Their answers have been very helpful and revealing. Below I have listed the questions linked to their answers and organized them along the Decision-Maker's Path (TM).

A. Where are you coming from?

B. Where do you want to go with the issue?

C. What are you waiting for?

D. What are your wise ones generally advising?

E. How are the pros and cons of your issue balancing out?

F. What are the "Powers That Be" saying?

G. What is your real agenda?

H. What facts and reasons are you contending with?

I. What insights and oversights are emerging?

J. How are you going to tell your decision?

K. What are you willing to risk to gain what you can only hope for with your answer?

L. What is signaling you that the decision you discern is the right one?

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks.

John

PS: You may also be interested in some of the responses I first received to my question: "Would you like to participate in the online Decision-Making: A Reel Retreat?"

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Making Choices and the Monty Hall Problem

When I talk to people about the difference between making choices, making judgments, and making decisions, I am particularly struck with the many who see decision-making as the same thing as choice-making.

I usually suggest that they consider the Let's Make A Deal situation so they can feel the difference.

In Wikipedia there is actually an article describing the Monty Hall problem as a puzzle involving probability loosely based on the game show.

Here's the article's introduction to the problem. Can you see the difficulty with choice-making after you finish reading about the car and the goats?

The name comes from the show's host, Monty Hall. The problem is also called the Monty Hall paradox; it is a veridical paradox in the sense that the solution is counterintuitive.

A widely known statement of the problem appeared in a letter to Marilyn vos Savant's Ask Marilyn column in Parade:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Because there is no way for the player to know which of the two unopened doors is the winning door, many people assume that each door has an equal probability and conclude that switching does not matter.

In fact, in the usual interpretation of the problem the player should switch—doing so doubles the probability of winning the car from 1/3 to 2/3.

When the problem and the solution appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including several hundred mathematics professors, wrote to the magazine claiming the published solution was wrong.

Some of the controversy was because the Parade statement of the problem fails to fully specify the host's behavior and is thus technically ambiguous. However, even when given completely unambiguous problem statements, explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still meet the correct answer with disbelief.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

John