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Decision Making Textbook

A free, self-paced textbook in 7 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 227 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.

7 chapters · 227 cards · Updated

Chapters

  1. 1Foundations of Decision Making

    Decision making is the process of choosing a course of action from multiple options based on goals, evidence, and trade-offs. At its heart, every decision involves selecting among...

  2. 2Decision Strategy: Reversibility and Velocity

    Few distinctions in decision-making matter more than reversibility. A reversible decision can be changed cheaply later; an irreversible one is costly or difficult to unwind. The sa...

  3. 3The Cognitive Landscape: Biases and Heuristics

    Human decisions are shaped by mental shortcuts that serve us well in familiar settings and betray us in unfamiliar ones. Kahneman's distinction between System 1 (fast, automatic, p...

  4. 4Reasoning Under Uncertainty

    Most consequential decisions are made without full information, so reasoning well under uncertainty is a core skill. Frank Knight drew the foundational distinction between risk, wh...

  5. 5Frameworks for Choosing Well

    Good decisions benefit from choosing an approach that fits the situation. Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework sorts contexts into five domains. In Simple contexts, cause and effect ar...

  6. 6Group Decisions, Roles, and Processes

    Decisions in organizations rarely belong to a single mind, which is why roles and processes matter. A decision owner is the person accountable for making the call after gathering i...

  7. 7Practices for Better Decision Making

    Good judgment is built, not born, and several practices compound over time. A decision journal captures the reasoning, predictions, and emotions at the time a choice is made; revie...

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