Where there is judgment there is noise

When I saw that the authors of Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) and Nudge (Cass R Sustein) had collaborated to write this book, my System 1 thinking kicked in and I immediately hit the "buy" button. I do like this type of "clever thinking" book and was intrigued to discover what "noise" was all about.

The authors collectively consider the impact of "noise" on the way people apply judgment and also discuss the difference between noise and bias. This may include any decision we make and is applicable to investment decisions, recruitment, sentencing for criminal justice and calculations for insurance risks. Humans are fallible and it is found that a simple way to reduce noise is to consider the "wisdom of the crowd" by simple aggregation and averaging of opinions. This is not so easy, of course, with one off events and, as we know, history only runs once and it is impossible to quantify the impact of noise on unique political decisions.

There is some overlap in this book with previous works by the authors such as Kahnman's System 1 / System 2 thinking and the concept of Superforecasting as outlined in Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner book from 2016 is also re-visited here. There is also a lot of content devoted to statistical analysis which some will love but others (myself included) will find heavy going in places.

I may be biased (see what I did there?) here, but I would give this book 4 stars. It has been proven that the first person in a group who speaks will guide the group in its collective decision, so maybe this first review will set a trend.

25 people found this helpful

Powerful book

A few people have left negative reviews, but I feel they have not read or engaged with the book. A powerful case is made by Kahneman et al. that noise is an important problem in many decision contexts, and concerning how to interpret and deal with that noise. Laypeople, and even non-statististicians who use statistics, could learn a lot from the book -- although there are indeed some controversial claims that could have used another revision. Nonetheless this is an important book and I think it will have a long life.

The audiobook is OK, but the narrator runs through material breathlessly and often with evident misunderstanding. He reads chapter and section headings as if they are simply part of the ongoing text and that is a most alarming habit. The narrator of Thinking Fast and Slow was so good -- what happened to him?

15 people found this helpful

Hard going

This kind of book is not suited to audible. Although you can download an accompanying PDF I think a text copy of the book is important to digest the material properly.
It takes me back to my school days, eyes glazing over as the narrator reads out studies.

7 people found this helpful

Not very interesting

Good subject matter but the result is repetitive and also you need a download that I have yet to find!!

3 people found this helpful

The irony of noise!

This book, is really about variation when people make judgements, but they call it noise: not systemic or individual bias, but occasion and individual noise blah blah. The whole pitch is "you should reduce noise" in a noisy book, as your first task is to get used to the unholy offspring of Sheldon and Kermit squeaking the words out. Then once you can concentrate on the content, it first seems like an advert for buying a Noise Audit with some pretty poor marketing style imagineering. Then they do it again and again in a Gladwellian attempt to prove the same point slightly differently, before just repeating themselves again, until the whole things descends into an exercise in the wisdom of (informed) crowds. Then right at the end they explain that noise can be good and the implications of trying to reduce it, can make the whole thing pointless. Drum roll and cymbal crash to the irony. I'm a massive fan of Dan and Cass, but this book feels like it was written during several wine infused dinner parties.... what were they thinking?

Insightful book, though not well-suited to audiobook

Noise is an insightful and thought-provoking book, though it is perhaps poorly-served as an audiobook. This is due to the amount of technical detail included, and the frequent need to refer to the accompanying PDF.

Informative, educative , unsettling

A very well constructed and read book on a complex subject, providing unsettling insights into real world decision making but clearly setting out methods for improvements.

So boring and lacks substance.

So boring and lacks substance. Please don't buy it. The voice will put you to sleep.

Noise and how to be a little bit better

Having Read Thinking Fast and Slow I was very excited for this book, Kahneman references the work of his co-authors repeatedly and I could only imagine where a collaboration was goijng to lead. I didn't find it as edifying as Thinking Fast and Slow and at several times I thought this book is more of a signposting exercise to where you can find some interesting research, the sorts of statistics that you need to look into and some ancedotes about areas where Noise can be found. I'm pretty interested in the Superforecasters after this book and think that I'll probably look more into that area.

Whilst interesting in terms of seeing how inconsitent methodologies can cause more problems than bias where a miss in the system against a theoretical "true value" doesn't cancel out with a mistake made in the other direction, ie when you mis-price two stocks it doesn't matter if the errors are opposite, both are errors and it's only the magintude of the error that matters.

The authors seem to assume some familiarity with their previous work, talking about System 1 thinking without the background of thinking fast and slow might cause an issue for some readers. The audiobook also has an interview with the authors at the end which seems to be a quick summary of the points made in the book, it's about half an hour and doesn't add much to the text.

There's some practical advice at the end of the book about eliminating Noise in different areas which is interesting even though it might be hard to implement because it's hard to see the results. Author's refer to decision hygenie as you're fighting an invisible enemy through methodology which can't show what you might have been protected from, you just have to trust in the process.

All noise and no entertainment!

A shocking attempt at a book, from a big name written. It was like an academic transcript read out loud. It repeats the same phrases and concepts for hour after hour.
Horrendous endurance exercise. There should be a medal for getting to the end. He needs to focus on the ‘So what factor’. So much application was missing from this in stimulating dullness.