Rationality for Mortals

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He has taught at the Universities of Munich, Constance, Salzburg, and Chicago. Recent books include Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart (1999, with Peter Todd et al.), Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (2000), Calculated Risks (2002), and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (2007). He has been the recipient of many awards, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research.

• Preface1. Bounded and rational 2. Fast and frugal heuristics3. Rules of thumb in animals and humans4. I think, therefore I err 5. Striking a blow for sanity in theories of rationality 6. Out of the frying pan into the fire7. What's in a sample? A manual for building cognitive theories 8. "A 30% chance of rain tomorrow" 9. Simple tools for understanding risks: From innumeracy to insight10. The evolution of statistical thinking11. Mindless statistics12. Children can solve Bayesian problems13. In the year 2054: Innumeracy defeatedReferencesSubject IndexName Index

"Gerd Gigerenzer has created new, pathbreaking ways of thinking about human rationality. His ideas build on one another and are best seen as part of a coherent whole that is when the nature of his arguments emerges most clearly."-- Leda Cosmides, University of California Santa Barbara