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.

Very Interesting Book

Just as good and interesting as his other book
“ Thinking , fast & slow “ .

Thank you Daniel Kahneman

I now have two ways to address Noise

Prior to this great book, I addressed noise with a simple mantra...
You can’t spell Brian without the “I” in idiot. Thank you for helping me to not seem totally crazy!

Skip audio version, consider e-book or hardcover

This book is quite different in both content and style from Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I found to be enormously interesting even though I was familiar with most of its content. It was also nicely structured and well written.

In contrast, Noise is a typical business book that repackages ideas and tools that have been around for a long time, extends them a bit, gives them a slightly different spin, and then repeats a handful of ideas over and over. Unfortunately, unlike the best books of that genre, this one is three times longer than it needs to be, is not well written, and does not have good narration. On the plus side, their Mediating Assessment Protocol is a nice integration of decision-making processes that have been researched and recommended by experts for decades. There is also some useful information in the Appendices. I ended up buying the hardcover and returning the audio version so that I could more easily focus on the useful content.

I found the narrator's style to be unpleasant to listen to. It seems like he tried to make the content interesting by frequently changing the inflection of his voice. The result is that it sounds the way some people do when they talk to a pet or a small child.