My topic is “decision-making in the casino”. These are the instructions and requirements:

You will submit a short paper (2000 words maximum), illustrating one or more concepts covered in class or in the readings. It may be drawn from your professional, educational, and personal experiences, or from the media.

For an illustration drawn from the media, you will find a newspaper or magazine article, excerpt from a book, or a video tape segment from a film or television show, etc. that illustrates one or more principles from class or the readings, and discuss and analyze its relevance to material that we cover in this course.

The topic illustration will be graded based on the validity, quality, clarity, and insightfulness of your description and analysis, as well as the “interestingness” and/or importance of the example chosen.

Paper guidelines:

An excellent paper will be one in which you clearly convey an understanding of the material of the class, and a creativity and insight in applying the course topics to real-life situations or problems. Things to include in your papers:

Make sure you clearly describe the situation. If you’re using a newspaper or magazine article as your source, briefly summarize (in a paragraph or two) the key points of the article that are relevant to your discussion. If you’re describing an experience you’ve had, make sure to give relevant background so that the reader can understand the context of the judgment/decision situation.

Make sure you correctly identify the effect (or effects) that applies to the example you choose (e.g., misperception of random sequences, illusory correlation, judgment by availability or representativeness, loss aversion, decision framing, etc.) If several possible effects could all be working in concert, describe how they might work together, how each effect might contribute to different aspects of the described situation, and how you might be able to distinguish between different explanations.

If you are documenting an error, mistake, or something otherwise undesirable: how might you go about improving the situation? For example, if you consider an example where a manager shows a possible hindsight bias in evaluating the usefulness of predictions, what specific steps could be taken to correct the problem?