Big Decisions Blog
The latest news and insights from the team at Hubbard Decision ResearchMetric Junkie: A Useful Insight
Do Amazon book ranks tell us anything? Sure, they convey something about the popularity of a given book, but looking a the current rank of a book on Amazon is just a snapshot of a fairly volatile number. It would be much more useful if we could see how the ranks of...
Second Edition HTMA #1 in Statistics
Who really knows what drives Amazon's decisions about how books should be categorized? Not me. The first edition of How to Measure Anything was categorized on Amazon as "math for business" and it was virtually always able to hold the #1 rank in that category for the...
Buzz on the 2nd Edition of HTMA causes Wiley to accelerate release
Wiley has decided to accelerate the release of the second edition of How to Measure Anything. Instead of being released in May, it will be shipped to warehouses this month and ready for sale in early April. Apparently, the book is a source of a lot of positive buzz...
The Measurement Challenge
I'm reintroducing the Measurement Challenge for the blog.  I ran it for a couple of years on the old site and had some very interesting posts. Use this thread to post comments about the most difficult - or even apparently "impossible" - measurements you can...
Can “expert” training increase confidence while making judgments worse?
I came across more interesting research about possible "placebo effects" in decision making. According to the two studies cited below, receiving formal training in lie detection (e.g. so that law enforcement officers are more likely to detect a untruthful statement...
Still no evidence…
I get many emails about the validity of Risk Maps, Risk Scores and Risk Matrices in risk analysis. I know there are a lot of passionate proponents of these methods (and many heavily-invested vendors) but there is still no evidence that such methods improve forecasts...
2010 Spring Webinars are Available
See the webinars page to sign up for intensive training sessions for Applied Information Economics. You can take the popular "Calibration" webinar or even sign up for the full AIE Module I & II training (required for AIE Level I certification). Each webinar is...
You asked for it…the new HTMA Study Guides are out
 We have a new batch of the 4-page, color, laminated reference cards for How to Measure Anything. Some of the material is actually already updated for the upcoming second edition of the book (spring 2010). See the products page for details.
