Real-World Probability Books: Psychology of Probability
Kahneman, Daniel.
Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Penguin, 2011.
This book summarizes 40 years of psychology research showing
that we are much less rational than we believe, in ways that are
analyzable and therefore (in principle) that we can learn to counteract.
It has been almost universally praised by many others,
and I am happy to join that consensus.
With 38 ten-page chapters, the style is that of a scholar making great effort to write
in clear and non-technical language, though parts still require a level
of attention higher than casual reading.
Dan Ariely's book (below) covers some of the same themes in a more chatty style.
Chapters 10 and 13-21 are the most relevant to my course, though I encourage students
to read the entire book.
Kahneman, Daniel and Sibony, Olivier and Sunstein, Cass R.
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment.
Little, Brown Spark, 2021.
See my review
to appear in the Mathematical Intelligencer.
Blatchley, Barbara.
What Are the Chances?: Why We Believe in Luck.
Columbia University Press, 2021.
See my amazon.com review.
Ariely, Dan.
Predictably Irrational.
HarperCollins, 2008.
Though not directly relevant to our topic of probability, this is a
wonderful book, at the popular end of the popular science spectrum, on behavioral economics.
Chapters illustrate a dozen aspects of people's irrationality, exemplified by
(i) we assess prices relative to some "anchor" price rather than in absolute terms
(ii) "free" exerts great psychological attraction
(iii) how tension between market exchanges and social exchanges perplexes us
(iv) the "endowment effect" - we place more value on things if we own them than if we don't.
Nickerson, Raymond S.
Cognition and Chance.
The psychology of probabilistic reasoning.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.
Useful and interesting book for several reasons.
Style is midway between popular science and scholars writing for other scholars.
The initial chapters
recount history and the basic frequentist/Bayesian/etc
philosophies.
The later chapters describe what experiments by psychologists like Tversky
have shown about the way people think about probability.
The book touches upon many different topics, and gives around 1000 references, so it's
an invaluable resource for seeing the big picture of what scholars
have thought about, and for leads into the research literature.
Downside: description of research is (to my taste) often rather vague and the
author's verbal discussion is rather bland -- as if written by a committee -- rather
than crisp statements followed by critical analysis.
Mazur, Joesph.
What's Luck Got to Do with It?: The history, mathematics, and psychology of the
gambler's illusion,
Princeton University Press, 2010.
See my amazon.com review.
Back to complete book list.