1. Challenges and Opportunities with Optimal Decision Making and How Advanced Analytics Can Help

1.1. How We Make Decisions and What Gets in the Way

In their book Nudge, economist Richard Thayler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein describe homo economicus and homo sapiens. Homo economicus are humans as they are described in economics textbooks. They act and make decisions completely rationally, have the computing power of a hundred super computers, and they always know precisely what will make them happy. Homo sapiens, however, do things like jump out of perfectly good airplanes, forget significant others’ birthdays, and occasionally drink or eat too much. Thaler and Sunstein refer to homo economicus as econs and refer to the rest of us as humans. ...

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