Have you ever hired someone only to regret your decision two months later? Or looked at your financial portfolio and wondered why you bought the stocks you did? In Smart Choices, authors John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa take the guesswork out of the decision-making process and offer a systematic approach to making the right choice. Most of us have problems making decisions, because we ve never learned how. The authors write: Despite the importance of decision making to our lives, few of us ever receive any training in it. So we are left to learn from experience. But experience is a costly, inefficient teacher that teaches us bad habits along with good ones. Because decision situations vary so markedly, the experience of making one important decision often seems of little use when facing the next. Smart Choices outlines eight elements involved in making the right decision, from identifying exactly what the decision is and specifying your objectives to considering...

#Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here? (2004-05-10) `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? said Alice. `That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. `I don t much care where-- said Alice. `Then it doesn t matter which way you go, said the Cat. Alice s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis CarrollDecision-making is the most fundamental life skill that unfortunately isnâ¬&trade,t taught properly in schools, high schools or universities. The more we get familiar with art and science of decision-making and be skillful i...

#Good Info, Poor Presentation (2004-02-21) The information presented in the book can be used to make vast improvements in decision making. The problem is that the book is difficult to read because it is pretty boring. The examples used in the book do little to enhance the reading. If you have to read a book on decision making, and can focus on something that s pretty boring, you should give this one a try.

#Indeed a practical guide (2003-10-17) This book is able to break down the decision making process into logical steps so that one can actually consciously think about it when faced with a decision. Some of the ideas are very simple and fundamental and we probably used them without thinking. What this book succeed in doing was to show how to look at the whole picture and how the ideas fit in. It was a good idea to used the home buying example though the process to illustrate the initial steps. However it would be better to use a consistent example for the last few topics as well. Was...

#The Jetman (2003-06-11) This is the ultimate book on decision making. The only drawbacks are the last examples the authors give about a job change decison by the Morgon Family. They need to change this example because it only uses two or three alternatives. The whole point of this text is to show people they need to consider lots of alternatives if you are going to entertain a job change, not just the three crummy ones in the example. This example contradicts most of the good lessons in the book. This is the reason I didn t give the book a five star rating. Hopefully in futu...

#Not very helpful (2002-01-04) I got to page 75 and couldn t remember what the previous 74 pages said. It was extremely boring and not helpful. Too many bad examples and not enough good ones. Their approach seemed too wordy. I didn t like this book.