Monday, November 11, 2013

The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty

Sam L. Savage
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A must-read for anyone who makes business decisions that have a major financial impact.

...  In The Flaw of Averages, Sam Savage­known for his creative exposition of difficult subjects­describes common avoidable mistakes in assessing risk in the face of uncertainty. Along the way, he shows why plans based on average assumptions are wrong, on average, in areas as diverse as healthcare, accounting, the War on Terror, and climate change. In his chapter on Sex and the Central Limit Theorem, he bravely grasps the literary third rail of gender differences.

Instead of statistical jargon, Savage presents complex concepts in plain English. In addition, a tightly integrated web site contains numerous animations and simulations to further connect the seat of the reader’s intellect to the seat of their pants.

The Flaw of Averages typically results when someone plugs a single number into a spreadsheet to represent an uncertain future quantity. Savage finishes the book with a discussion of the emerging field of Probability Management, which cures this problem though a new technology that can pack thousands of numbers into a single spreadsheet cell.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)


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