Noise

A Flaw in Human Judgment

By: Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

From the best-selling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, the co-author of Nudge, and the author of You Are About to Make a Terrible Mistake! comes Noise, a revolutionary exploration of why people make bad judgments, and how to control both noise and cognitive bias.

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients - or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different interviewers at the same firm make different decisions about indistinguishable job applicants - or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same interviewer, or the same customer service agent makes different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein show the detrimental effects of noise in many fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection. Wherever there is judgment, there is noise. Yet, most of the time, individuals and organizations alike are unaware of it. They neglect noise. With a few simple remedies, people can reduce both noise and bias, and so make far better decisions.

Packed with original ideas, and offering the same kinds of research-based insights that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times best sellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment - and what we can do about it.

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2021

* This audiobook contains a downloadable PDF which includes figures from the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Daniel Kahneman , Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein. Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2021 (P)2021 Random House Audio

Informative, but very long winded

Like his previous book(s), it is best read or viewed in an abridged form or through a summery. It's written like a high schooler was 300 words short on an essay. Great information and is very thought pravocating.

great book

another great book from this author. this should be studied in school. very useful.

An absolute seminal must read

This is one of the most well researched books in any field that I have ever written.

Do yourself a favour and read and reread then read this book again.

A true masterpiece.

Extremely informative

Extremely informative and surprisingly common sense. A lot of useful information for common life, and a bit terrifying.

concepts of book should be taught in high school

Excellent and informative book supported by scientific evidence. Kahnmann has so much to teach us. the performance of the narrator was also excellent

Decent

This book was not as memorable as his others, but a good introduction to the difference between noise and bias and importance of recognizing noise while evaluating systems.

Changed my perspective on solving daily and academic issues.

It is a bit slow in some chapters. It was hard to follow when the examples where to specific and detailed.

Mostly noise

A one pager turned into a boring book. I forced myself to listen to the end, but the book is an endless repetition of the same arguments. It is mostly noise...

Interesting, but detailed for audiobook

The subject was tough for an audiobook, but the narrator did well with it. I am interested in the ideas in the book, but for whatever reason, I was never able to access the pdf document that was supposed to come with the book. I have been able to access pdf docs with other audiobooks, so I'm not sure what the issue was with this one or how to resolve it. The content is important and much of it was presented in a way I had not considered before. If this content is extremely important to you, I recommend getting the physical book instead of the audiobook. I want to capture the essence of the decision hygiene, as explained in the book, but wasn't really able to fully capture it from listening. I think I would need to see it written in the book. I oversee various qualitative case review process in my line of work, so we have been working to increase inter-rater reliability, which seems consistent with the ideas in this book about noise reduction. We ultimately want the case review data to be reliable and valid, so we need the case reviewers to follow the protocol and rate according to the criteria. As such, the concepts in this book were helpful and give me additional ways to communicate the importance of following the guidance and not trying to be creative with the review tool. Where there is judgment, there is noise.

Very Intriguing Listen

Very informative on several levels. Kahneman does a wonderful job of explaining noise and showing it’s effect on all of our experience.