Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser

Dan Levy has written a wonderful, compassionate book, that allows readers to tap into the wisdom of Richard Zeckhauser and his legendary 40-year standing course in Analytical Thinking at the Harvard Kennedy School. I believe is wonderful, because it is written in language that is accessible for the non-specialized reader, without losing the essence of the principles. And it is compassionate because it is cognizant of the mental biases and flaws human beings have in the process of thinking and decision-making.There are maxims here that have the potential to enhance decision-making and help readers live a better life, organized around five areas: thinking straight, dealing with uncertainty, decision-making, understanding policy, and living fully. They are all illustrated with specific examples from real-life situations, going from choosing a marriage partner, cancer treatments, or designing and implementing an appropriate Covid19 response strategy; told by a wide range of people from Zeckhauser's teaching assistants to the Prime Minister of Singapore.My favorite maxims incidentally came back-to-back in the book. Number 14 on applying the notion of elasticity - often elusive even to economics' students - to everyday situations. Love the notion that we cannot decide between doing more of A or more of B, without considering how much of A and B are we already doing, to begin with. Amazing to how many situations this simple principle applies! And then Number 15, on the importance of understanding heterogeneity in data, that is not particularly relying on averages, because the average person more often than not is actually an individual that does not look alike anybody, be it an individual or group. Instead, understanding heterogeneity allows you to divide the population into sub-groups, with very different characteristics and behaviors. I found the example on how understanding heterogeneity in Covid19 transmission of average rates - groups with very low contagion rates versus "super-spreaders" very enlightening when thinking about Covid19 policy responses.Don't be put off by jargon, an additional value-added of the book is to teaching you some vocabulary that will make you sound sophisticated in cocktail parties!Highly recommended.

This book offers some useful mental models for helping one to figure out complex problems. The structure is very simple, a maxim is laid out and then three or four real-life examples are given to elaborate on each and how this has helped them to think about a problem. This is a highly practical book, and during the reading of the book you will begin to think about some of your own decisions. I have used some of the maxims in the book to help figure out how long I should keep running my ageing car to optimise economy and even career direction.The constant tributes to Zeckhauser and his colleagues are excessive though. Better to leave those in the prologue or reviews rather than the main content within the book.

A very good book on how to think in probabilities and make decisions under uncertainty.There are 19 maxims, divided in 5 chapters. The first chapter isn’t that useful. But chapters 2 and 3 are gold. While chapters 4 and 5 are ok. I would given up reading after the 1st chapter but glad I continued.I would have liked some more detailed examples and case studies. But nonetheless, I highly recommend it

Good decisions can have poor outcomes and bad decisions can ended up with good outcomes. This is why decision making can be hard whether it's personal or work related decisions. Yes, the book referred to a lot of big names but they do offer very good insight of Richard's wisdom. Dan Levy did a good job in applying Richard Zeckhauser's wisdom in thinking analytically.For example, in the foreward by Larry Summers, he told a story on what happened when he was in the hospital with a serious condition. At the time there were two possible explanations for his symptoms. When told this, Richard inquired about their relative frequency in the population. None of the interns and residents knew the relative frequency and several thought it was entirely irrevelant. They learned from Richard of the need to pay attention to background probabilities.Another example is about his mother. The doctor was unsure if his mother has appendicitis or a tumor and was waiting for more data. Richard cut to the chase by saying that "I presume that in either case you will operate, if yes, shouldn't you operate now, and bring both sets of tools? Waiting for another day would be dangerous.Chapter 1 is about thinking straight. Very often we got stuck and not able to think clearly about a situation. If we can simplify the situation to enable clear thinking, it'll push you forward. Another thing that helps is to think of an everyday analogue when trying to undertsand a complex situation.Chapter 2 is about tackling uncertainty. It's all about probabilities. Covid-19 is one of those black swan events many of us did not expect how our lives and those of everyone in the planet would be upended by a global pandemic. Many nations have used probabilites to formulate their policies on how to deal with the pandemic.Chapter 3 is about making decisions wwhich can be hard in many cases.What I find helpful is Maxim 11 - don't be limited by the options you have in front of you.Sometimes we've to think out of the box. Otherwise, we might not see the big picture. The other thing is we can get overwhelmed by information. But information is only valuable if it can change your decision.Chapter 4 is about understanding policy. I really like the example on the fairness of early addmisions by colleges. Stanford University's former President Hennessy defended the early admission program by enphasizing that the average SAT scoer of those admitted early was 210 points higher than those admitted in the regular pool. Richard's feedback was that to determine if early admission is fair, we need to know if the worst person admitted under early admission is better than the best person denied under regular admission. Think about the margin, and not the average.Decision making is not easy and the book has many great examples showing us how we can make a better decision and not regretting it.

Good

Good collection of Maxims. Good examples of how each one is implemented. Might be little hard to read. I did it in 3 days splitting it into three 2 hour reading sessions, reading light in the sections that had more than one example. As an additional advantage you get to people from various fields.

For many decades now, Richard Zeckhauser has been one of the leading scholars on human decision making, especially from a prescriptive perspective. That is, he accepts that humans are human indeed (being emotional, confused by complexity, looking to others), and aims to provide advice that helps people to make better decisions, on the spot. During a successful career in research and teaching multiple cohorts of future decision makers from all over the world, Richard developed simple rules, maxims, for successful decision making that all of us can easily apply in our daily work (and beyond). In this book, Dan Levy together with Richard collected and organized the experiences of many of Richard’s former students and advisees around these maxims. The interplay of the practitioner-provided examples from several fields (from business to public health), with additional commentary illustrating the key insights from Richard’s thinking, makes the book both exciting and useful reading.

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