Summary

In Chapter 6, Amos and Danny started working at the Oregon Research Institute, which had been involved with the study of how experts reach judgements. Lewis summarizes some of the work of other researchers at the institute, including their involvement in the construction of the Twin Towers in New York, and their interest in medical decision-making.

Amos and Danny continued their work researching the extent to which people made systematic errors when trying to judge probabilities. They started looking for patterns in the mistakes people make. They noticed several rules, or “heuristics” (183), that came into play when people make decisions. One they termed “representativeness” (183), which meant that when making a judgement, people compared the given situation or question to a model they already held in their minds. Lewis gives the example: “Does Jeremy Lin match my mental picture of a future NBA player?” (183). Another heuristic...