Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking

Scientific and philosophical concepts can change the way we solve problems by helping us to think more effectively about our behavior and our world. Surprisingly, despite their utility, many of these tools remain unknown to most of us.

In Mindware, the world-renowned psychologist Richard E. Nisbett presents these ideas in clear and accessible detail, offering a tool kit for better thinking and wiser decisions. He has made a distinguished career of studying and teaching such powerful problem-solving concepts as the law of large numbers, statistical regression, cost-benefit analysis, sunk costs and opportunity costs, and causation and correlation, probing how best to teach others to use them effectively in their daily lives. In this groundbreaking book, he shows that a course in a given field--statistics or economics, for example--often doesn't work as well as a few minutes of more practical instruction in analyzing everyday situations. Mindware shows how to reframe common problems in such a way that these powerful scientific and statistical concepts can be applied to them. The result is an enlightening and practical guide to the most powerful tools of reasoning ever developed--tools that can easily be used to make better professional, business, and personal decisions.

Richard E. Nisbett is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and one of the world’s most respected psychologists. He has been awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychology Association, the William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievements, and the Donald T. Campbell Award for Distinguished Research in Social Psychology, among others. His books The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why and Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count have won multiple awards and been translated into more than ten languages.