Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions |  | Authors: John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, Howard Raiffa
Publisher: Broadway
List Price: $15.99
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Seller: joesbooks628
Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 8786
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0767908864
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.83
EAN: 9780767908863
ASIN: 0767908864
Publication Date: March 5, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Have you ever hired someone only to regret your decision two months later? Or looked at your financial portfolio and wondered why you bought the stocks you did? In Smart Choices, authors John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa take the guesswork out of the decision-making process and offer a systematic approach to making the right choice. Most of us have problems making decisions, because we've never learned how. The authors write: Despite the importance of decision making to our lives, few of us ever receive any training in it. So we are left to learn from experience. But experience is a costly, inefficient teacher that teaches us bad habits along with good ones. Because decision situations vary so markedly, the experience of making one important decision often seems of little use when facing the next. Smart Choices outlines eight elements involved in making the right decision, from identifying exactly what the decision is and specifying your objectives to considering risk tolerance and looking at how what you decide on today influences what you may decide in the future. The book is full of real-life situations and scenarios that effectively illustrate each element of a good decision. If you think the topic of making the right choice is mundane or a simple matter of common sense, then think again. Smart Choices will relieve you of the regret that so many of us carry because we didn't know how to "think it through." --Harry C. Edwards
Product Description
Where should I live?
Is it time to switch careers?
What is the best course of action for me?
Decisions shape our experiences, from choosing which job offer to accept, to buying the right car, to selecting a good accountant. How do we know which choice is the smart one? How can we be consistent and confident in our decisions? In this book from the three leading authorities on decision-making, readers learn how to approach all types of decisions with a simple set of skills developed by professors from Harvard, MIT, and the University of Southern California.
Combining solid research with common sense and practical experience, this user-friendly guide shows readers how to assess deep-seated objectives, create a comprehensive set of alternatives, determine likely consequences, make tradeoffs, and grapple with uncertainty. Not only will readers learn how to make decisions, they will learn how to make the smartest decisions. For anyone caught at a confusing crossroadâwhether youâre choosing between mutual funds or deciding where to retireâthe Smart Choices program will improve your decision-making abilities immediately, and make your life more rewarding and fulfilling.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 51
 It was a bad choice to read Smart Choices... November 14, 2009
mtl222 (Chicago)
Unfortunately, I have to burst your bubble. "Smart Choices" isn't a very good book on the topic of decision making. There is a book called "Managerial Decision Making" that is much better, although it is written at a higher level. "Smart Choices" is written at a 7th grade level.
 Making Educated Guesses October 24, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
The talnted trio of John S Hammond, Ralph L Keeney & Howard Raiffen have joined forces to help people understand a more logical approach to decision making. When faced with difficult decisions, many of us have a tendency of relying too much on "intuition", instead of cold hard facts. Usually, those decisions prove to be bad ones.
On the other hand, sometimes our decisions are completely random; statistically a dead heat between two options. That happened to me years ago when faced with a choice of two different job offers. I remember writing the "pros & cons" of each possibility on a piece of paper and still couldn't figure out which way to go. Finally, I tossed a coin. It came out: Enterprise Rent-a-Car (then called Executive Leasing Company), and I wound up having a nice career; I even wrote a book about the experience (Life Under the Corporate Microscope: A Maverick's Irreverent Perspective)
Admittedly, that particular decision was random, dumb luck. After reading this book, I know more about making more informed choices, by analyizing the data in a logical manner. In that particular scenario, I've got to believe without using a coin, the decision would've been the same; I just don't recall every detail. Maybe I'm smarter than I thought? Naw.
 Somewhat Good but not Great September 30, 2009
Sachmo
The first 75 pages or so of this book are pretty boring. As someone else noted, immediately after reading them you wonder what it was you just read, because the writing feels very meaningless. The one message I took away from it was, carefully think about how you phrase a problem. True enough, but that is also kind of obvious.
One thing especially annoying about the book was that they role-played with a couple seeking to buy a new home because they were having a new baby. The problem as they describe is whether to renovate, buy a new home, if so which home, etc etc. The examples, although real in some aspects, do not go into enough depth. The case studies such as this one feel artificially canned to demonstrate a point. The case studies could have been a LOT better throughout the book, and would have made the book from an OK product to something really good.
Methods in this book, although systematic and useful, don't directly map to real life. They do however point you in the direction you need to go, which is to start writing things down in a clear coherent fashion (in terms of stating problems), and creating tables to visually see solutions to these problems compared against each other.
This book gets pretty good when it gets into the process of comparing alternatives. The ideas about putting solutions into tables, assigning numerical values to qualitative information, and then eliminating dominated alternatives is great. It clearly illustrates how to compare direct alternatives to each other, and there is very little room for screwing this up. Really good stuff, made the book worth reading.
After that however, I don't really buy into their risk analysis section. The assumptions behind the risk forecasting aren't clearly articulated and I'm not so sure that the future can be forecasted with percentages at ALL (as in a 40% chance that I win a lawsuit). I have a very high degree of skepticism to any numerical forecasting done in this fashion.
The linked decision section is not that great either.
In the end what makes this book really good is demonstrating how to compare direct alternatives - i.e. if you have a choice between 4 houses, or 3 jobs, or 6 car mechanics - this book will show you how to narrow it down to 1 choice in an extremely well thought out and articulated manner. I guess it makes the book worth reading, although much of the rest of it is boring.
My only criticism is that often times choices, (the choice of a job for example) will necessarily involve other decisions, such as what city to live in, what apartment or house to rent, that are tightly interwoven... Moving from top level decisions to bottom level decisions (like city first, then job, then apartment) is not always so clear cut. For example, the same decision tree could be (job first, city second, then apartment). Better case studies with a bit more complex problems would have helped a little bit in this regard.
 Smart Choices Book was a very Smart Choice! August 19, 2009
Augustsum (USA)
I was really suprised by how much I was helped by this book. I consider Smart Choices to be the best book I had ever purchased. Since I went to college, I was faced with making important life decisions. Unfortunately, I made very few smart decisions in my life. As I look back, I would have changed it all. I definitely could have changed it all with the help of this book.
This book has been written by top experts in this field. This book, at times, goes into too much complicated analysis of what has to be done for someone to make a smart decision. This is not necessarily bad since it tends to illustrate many points that the authors try to bring home. The authors do admit that for many life decisions, too much analysis is not often needed. If you follow some main steps that the authors advice you to take, you will be on your way to making smart decisions. I believe even if you use 50% of what this book tells you to do, you are more than likely to make a smart decision.
Once again, I wish I had this book a decade ago. I would not have been broke, unhappy, lonely, unhealthy and with so much useless education right now. I already made a few decisions based on this book. I hope I will continue to make progress. Do read this book! It can really change your life faster than all self-help books combined out there.
Must Read for Business Analysts July 29, 2009
K. Brennan (Toronto, ON, Canada)
"Smart Choices" is a book I believe every business analyst should read, and I don't write those words lightly.
It's a book about decision making: how to define the problem you're trying to solve, how to identify alternatives, assess your choices, and come to the best possible decision when dealing with complex choices and under conditions of uncertainty. What makes this book a classic is that it manages to distill a very difficult challenge into a simple, and easily applied, approach. In its 250 pages, it tells you how to handle tradeoffs, assess risk, deal with linked problems, and avoid the classic psychological traps that impede the decision-making process. It's a short and easy read, one you can probably get through in an evening or two, but it's also a book I keep coming back to a decade after I first read it.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Professional Development, IIBA
A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 51
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