Decision Science and Technology: Reflections on the Contributions of Ward Edwards 1999 edition

Marc Notes: Papers originally presented at the 1997 Bayesian Conference.; Includes bibliographical references and index. Table of Contents: Preliminaries. Introduction. 1. Introduction to a Festschrift; B. A. Mellers. Behavioral Decision Theory. 2. On the Interplay of Riskless and Risky Utility; R. D. Luce. 3. The Paradoxes of Allais, Stochastic Dominance, and Decision Weights; M. H. Birnbaum. Who's Afraid of a Little Risk? New Evidence for General Risk Aversion; E. U. Weber. 5. Manipulating Hedonic Strategies of Choice; A. Schwartz, et al. 6. How Good are Fast and Frugal Heuristics?; G. Gigerenzer, et al. 7. Decision Making by Domain Experts: The GNAHM Effect; J. Shanteau. Decision Analysis. 8. On the Relevance of Behavioral Decision Research for Decision Analysis; D. von Winterfeldt. 9. Evaluation of Probabilities: A Level Playing Field? R. L. Winkler. 10. A Robust Bayesian Look at the THeory of Precise Measurement; E. Moreno, et al. 11. Probabilistic Reasoning and the Science of Complexity; D. A. Schum. 12. Linear Inequalities and the Analysis of Multi-Attribute Value Matrices; F. Hutton Barron, B. E. Barrett. 13. Life and Death Decisions for Individuals and Couples; R. A. Howard. 14. Robot Ethics, Value Systems and Decision Theoretic Behaviors; T. S. Levitt. 15. Decision-Theoretic Troubleshooting: A Framework for Repair and Experiment; J. S. Breese, D. Heckerman. Decisions in Society. 16. Public Values and Public Policy; R. L. Keeney. 17. Group Elicitation of Probability Distributions: Are Many Heads Better then One? L. D. Phillips. 18. The QALY Model: Utilities for Cost-Utility Analysis in Health Care; D. G. Fryback. 19. Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, and the Social Context for Risk Decision Making; P. Slovic, R. Gregory. Historical Notes. 20. The Making of Decision Theory; P. C. Fishburn. 21. A Brief History of SPUDM, or How Europe Took Off on Behavioral Decision Research; C. Vlek. 22. Ward Edwards and New Professional Organizations; J. Shanteau, et al. 23. Some Reflections on Ward Edwards; D. A. Schum. The Last Word. 24. Festschrift: A Book and a Party; W. Edwards. Publisher Marketing: The subject of this book is the founder of behavioural decision theory, which addresses the question of how people actually confront decisions, as opposed to the question of how they should make decisions.

Contributor Bio:  Edwards, Ward Psychologist Ward Edwards, a former faculty member in USC College s department of psychology and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering s Daniel J. Epstein department of industrial and systems engineering, died Feb. 1, after a long battle with Parkinson s disease. He was 77. Edwards was an internationally known authority on statistical decision analysis and behavioral decision research, a field he pioneered. Edwards retired from USC in 1995, after a career that included teaching at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan. At USC, he served as director of the Social Science Research Institute from 1973 to 1995, and was a professor of psychology and of industrial and systems engineering. In 1998, Edwards was honored with USC s Distinguished Emeritus Award. Edwards was instrumental in bringing Sarnoff Mednick, the current director of the Social Science Research Institute, to USC. The pair met while riding an escalator in a Copenhagen department store. Ward was riding down and I was riding up, says Mednick, professor of psychology at USC College. We had dinner together that evening. Some months later I agreed to take the position at USC. I am now director of the Institute that Edwards directed when we first met. Edwards early research aimed to better understand how people make decisions and to find ways to help people make wise ones. He used both experimental and modeling approaches. In the mid-1950s, Edwards wrote several articles that were instrumental in establishing the field of behavioral decision research. This field is well known today through its applications in behavioral finance and behavioral economics. Recently, the field garnered more attention with the award of the Nobel Prize in economics to one of its leading practitioners, Daniel Kahneman. Increasingly interested in applying Bayesian statistical ideas to decision-making models, Edwards founded the Bayesian Research Conference in 1962 and led it for the next 40 years. In the 1980s, he focused more of his research on the use of Bayesian and decision-analytic ideas in artificially intelligent systems and developed HAILFINDER, a computer-based system designed to predict severe weather in Colorado. He was a recipient of the Franklin V. Taylor Award from the Society of Engineering Psychologists, the Frank P. Ramsey Medal from the Operation Research Society of America and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Applied Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Edwards was a prolific author and contributor to professional journals. He wrote and co-wrote four books, including the seminal Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research (with Detlof von Winterfeldt). In 1999, he was honored with a volume of tributes titled Decision Science and Technology: Reflections on the Contributions of Ward Edwards. He also served as president of his own company, Wise Decisions Inc. Edwards earned a bachelor s from Swarthmore College, and a master s and doctorate from Harvard University. Contributor Bio:  Schum, David A JOSEPH B. KADANE is Leonard J. Savage Professor of Statistics and Social Sciences in the Department of Statistics at the Carnegie Mellon University. In 1993 he was cowinner of the Frank Wilcoxon Award. Professor Kadane is the author of Bayesian Methods and Ethics in a Clinical Trial Design and coauthor of Statistics and the Law (Wiley). DAVID A. SCHUM is Professor of Information Technology and Engineering and Professor of Law at George Mason University. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, he is the author of Evidential Foundations of Probabilistic Reasoning (Wiley).