Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

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Useful ideas

Reviewed in Canada on August 30, 2021

The book is easy to read in some places, rather tedious in others. It gives an original treatment of a little understood subject. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to learn about an important subject.

One person found this helpful

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Asad Ansari

The book has been oversold

Reviewed in Canada on May 24, 2021

I am not sure if I would have bought the book if Daniel Kahneman was not listed on the cover.

7 people found this helpful

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Asad Ansari

The book has been oversold

Reviewed in Canada on May 24, 2021

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I am not sure if I would have bought the book if Daniel Kahneman was not listed on the cover.

7 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Too much stats focus for too long

Reviewed in Canada on July 14, 2021

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Like many other, I find this book very difficult to read because first half of it is pretty much all stats. The entire book can also be a lot more succinct than what it is. Secondly, the book I received has printing error, it ends on page 374 (see picture) and starts from 327-374 again, without going beyond 374. I know there's more content after 374. So I'm missing pages for sure. I appreciate the idea the authors have raised, thus the two star.

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Athan

if you hear any noise... it ain't the content

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2021

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I really have no idea who the intended audience was for this book: the authors really, really dumb it down, to the point of explaining what variance is over several pages of prose. We did not all fail high school.

At the same time, they bring into the discussion some serious tools you won’t even meet until you get to graduate school in statistics, like the “percentage concordant,” which is not some type of supersonic airplane, but a rank correlation type of measure, and even provide a mini-table to move you from percentage concordant (PC) to correlation. The table, by the way, is bogus in the absence of context, as percentage concordant is a construct that I’m willing to bet relies heavily on assumptions that go unmentioned here.

The chapters end with summaries, which was OK for Thinking Fast and Slow, but a bit of an insult when the subject matter is so plain.

The style is pompous and paternalistic.

System A and System B are parachuted in, but (i) they’re barely explained (ii) that’s a theory to explain bias rather than noise (and invite a celebrity author to the proceedings)

Most annoyingly, terribly little ground is covered in this weighty tome. Gun to my head, I could probably get it all down to one page. Let me try:

1. Noise is just as bad as bias in terms of messing up your results

2. A good way to measure how bad your results are is the mean square error

3. Composition of Mean Square Error:

• Mean square error is made up of Bias and Noise
• Noise is made up of Level Noise and Pattern Noise
• Pattern Noise is made up of Stable Pattern Noise and Occasion Noise
• Level Noise is the kind of noise that comes from the fact that some judges are harsh and some are lenient, so two guys who did the same crime could get very different punishment.
• Pattern Noise is the kind of noise that comes from the fact that a judge may have a daughter, making him less harsh on young women that remind him of his daughter. He could be a harsh judge who is less harsh on young women who remind him of his daughter; or he could be a lenient judge who is extra lenient on young women who remind him of his daughter.
• Occasion Noise is the kind of noise that comes from the fact that judges are harsher right before lunch. Same judge, same crime, same perpetrator, different outcome, because it was a different occasion

4. If you ask people to measure something independently from one another, the more the merrier; but if they talk to each other first, then they will amplify errors for a variety of reasons that lead to groupthink

5. Machines beat people when it comes to cutting noise

6. In the quest to limit noise, people can fight back by sticking to simple rules

7. We humans like to build stories after the fact to explain what happened; they’re usually bogus: statistical explanations beat causal explanations

8. Bias can be the source of noise: inconsistency in bias is noise

9. Noise can arise when you’re told to rank things on a scale; to cut noise, it’s better to go ordinal than cardinal

10. To improve judgements you need (i) better judges (ii) a decision process that aggregates in a way that maintains independence among the judges (iii) guidelines (iv) relative rather than absolute judgements

11. There is a place for intuition: it’s got to be brought in at the very end, after all the mechanical work has finished

12. There actually is a place for noise: when people are bound to game the system

Read something else!

23 people found this helpful

Reader

The failure of trio-writing: and the triumph of marketing

Reviewed in Germany on July 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

It is always a warning sign, when a household name (Kahneman) joins forces with others (Sibony and Sustein) to publish a new book. Especially so, if the new book is a look-alike of the old, very successful Thinking, Fast and Slow. Letter type, size and chapter structure are all the same.
Yet the result is disappointing. The household name sold us a book that, as a stand alone publication, would be a likely (or very likely) failure.
The book is far too long; arguments are repeated from Thinking, Fast and Slow; fresh evidence/new ideas are far and few.
Very sad. Hope this triumviratus will NOT write any more books.

28 people found this helpful

NeilW

Only enough material for two chapters

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

There just isn't enough substance for a whole book, so they keep reiterating the same point over and over. This is no Thinking Fast and Slow.

One person found this helpful

Laboured

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

An interesting and very worthwhile idea. But the writing is dull, heavy going and repetitious. I gave up before I reached half way. Could have been a great book if it was a third the length and written in an engaging style.

Jon Buckland

Hard work, not

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

I have to confess I am a bit disappointed. I loved thinking fast and slow. But this isn't the same. It is hard work. Four chapters in and I am struggling to get hooked. It is hard work.

One person found this helpful

Stephen

Cashing in

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

Disappointing from Daniel.

Mary Tran

Arrived scratched on the cover

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2021

Verified Purchase

For such an expensive item I found the scratched cover unacceptable

One person found this helpful

Noise about Noise

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2022

Verified Purchase

This is a specialist book, not really for the general reader like me.

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