Description

The Sunday Times bestseller
‘A monumental, gripping book … Outstanding’ Sunday Times
Wherever there is human judgement, there is noise.

‘Noise may be the most important book I’ve read in more than a decade. A genuinely new idea so exceedingly important you will immediately put it into practice. A masterpiece’

Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

‘An absolutely brilliant investigation of a massive societal problem that has been hiding in plain sight’

Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics

From the world-leaders in strategic thinking and the multi-million copy bestselling authors of Thinking Fast and Slow and Nudge, the next big book to change the way you think.

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients – or that two judges in the same court give different sentences to people who have committed matching crimes. Now imagine that the same doctor and the same judge make different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday, or they haven’t yet had lunch. These are examples of noise: variability in judgements that should be identical.

In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein show how noise produces errors in many fields, including in medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, forensic science, child protection, creative strategy, performance review and hiring. And although noise can be found wherever people are making judgements and decisions, individuals and organizations alike commonly ignore its impact, at great cost.

Packed with new ideas, and drawing on the same kind of sharp analysis and breadth of case study that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge international bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise and bias in decision-making. We all make bad judgements more than we think. With a few simple remedies, this groundbreaking book explores what we can do to make better ones.

Publisher Review

'Noise may be the most important book I've read in more than a decade. A genuinely new idea so exceedingly important you will immediately put it into practice. A masterpiece' Angela Duckworth, author of Grit 'Noise is an absolutely brilliant investigation of a massive societal problem that has been hiding in plain sight' Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'The greatest source of ineffective policies are often not biases, corruption or ill-will, but three "I": Intuition, Ignorance and Inertia. This book masterfully demonstrates why the three "I" are so pervasive, and what we can do to fight them. An essential, eye opening read' Esther Duflo, winner of a 2019 Nobel Prize and co-author of Good Economics for Hard Times 'In Noise, the authors brilliantly apply their unique and novel insights into the flaws in human judgment to every sphere of human endeavour... Noise is a masterful achievement and a landmark in the field of psychology' Philip E. Tetlock, co-author of Superforecasting 'Get ready for some of the world's greatest minds to help you rethink how you evaluate people, make decisions, and solve problems' Adam Grant, bestselling author of Think Again 'Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein have discovered a problem as large as an elephant: noise. In this important book they show us why noise matters, why there's so much more of it than we realize, and how to reduce it. Implementing their advice would give us more profitable businesses, healthier citizens, a fairer legal system, and happier lives' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind 'An electrifying exploration of the human mind, this book will permanently change the way we think about the scale and scope of bias' David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and author of Tribes