03/27/2017 10:26 AM Posted by: SDP

SDP Fellows favorite books for their own use

Survey responses on favorite book for own use

In December, we reported on the results of a survey of SDP Fellows’ favorite books overall, and favorite for someone just learning DA. In February, we talked about their favorite books to give to a client. Here, we close out this series with the Fellows’ favorite books for their own use.

Favorite book for own use:

There was definitely no clear preference on this one – the Fellows are all over the map for personal favorite. Many books got a single vote. Three books did however get a slight preference over the others:

• Foundations of Decision Analysis (Howard and Abbas)
• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman)
• Making Hard Decisions (Clemen and Reilly)

A few of the Fellows provided more nuanced responses depending on the situation. Some examples:

Patrick Leach – "This is a tough one. Thinking Fast and Slow is the proverbial bible of behavioral economics, but I’ve probably quoted Tavris & Aronson’s Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) more often. And although it’s not a DA book, Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind has been invaluable when it comes to understanding different people’s value systems. If you force me to pick one, though, I guess it has to be Kahneman.”.

Larry Neal - "I routinely use 3 books depending on the subject at hand. Introduction to Decision Analysis by Skinner (use this one if there’s only one in the end); Value Focused Thinking by Keeney; Foundations of Decision Analysis by Howard and Abbas (I should note here that this tome is very new and I still refer to Skinner for the West Coast stuff most frequently but that may change with time).” .

Bob Clemen – "Similarly, I have a hard time answering Q3 with a single book. Although I probably go to Making Hard Decisions more often than anything else, maybe that’s because I know it better than anything else. But to put together a core list:

• Clemen, MHD
• Kirkwood, Strategic DM
• Keeney, VFT
• Edwards, Miles, & von Winterfeldt, Advances in DA
• Parnell et al, Handbook of DA "

That’s it for our Fellows’ favorite books series!

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