The Power of Experiments: Decision Making in a Data-Driven World (Mit Press)

This is a thoughtful, short and concise book about an in-demand topic, written by leading academics in the field of behavioral economics and experimentation. Luca and Bazerman provide examples to illustrate their points from various angles without making the book simply a collection of bullet points. They dive into the historical roots of behavioral science and experiments, focusing on the fields of Psychology and Economics. The authors cleverly describe the technicalities of experiments and behavioral insights with easy distinctions between similar and often confusing concepts, precluding the need for more technical detail. I particularly enjoyed the structured and organized dive into tech industry experiments. Each chapter of Part II describes one such experiment / tech company, accompanied by a lesson that illustrates the “take-away” point. Occasionally, I found their background stories to be somewhat myopically focused on researchers and organizations affiliated with their institution – Harvard University. As someone who is very familiar with the literatures they touch upon, I would expect to see a slightly broader perspective of how the contributions of other institutions helped shape the state of behavioral experimentation. Overall however, I would highly recommend this book to anyone – not necessarily to people interested in experiments. It’s such an important, widespread and on the rise topic, presented in a very accessible and illustrative manner, that it’s probably worth anyone’s time. On my website, I summarize the key points and takeaways from each chapter.

This book is a love letter to "Nudge" by Richard Thaler. Seriously.It is laden with references to the book as well as related studies in the field of behavioral economics. Matter of fact, if you do a shot every time you read "nudge" on the page, you'd most likely die of cirrhosis before you get to page 150...I was expecting more of a "deep-dive" per se, but most of the time is spent recounting material from other texts and adding some context. It's not bad, but it's not special.The good:They wisely chose to spend some time on the way industry giants like Uber, Facebook, AirBnB, and others employ experiments to drive decision-making.The bad:It's all a bit shallow, like when your friends tell you to come over to have a splash in the pool but it is a kitty pool... They gloss over practical terms for the sake of keeping things friendly for a presumably non-technical crowd.I can't recommend it if you have read "Thinking Fast and Slow", "The Undoing Project", or any of the other behavioral economics classics. It's mostly rehashed.However, if you are completely new to experiments (or the idea of using experiments to drive managerial decisions) then this book will prove a fast and enjoyable read.

I bought this book based on a review in the New Yorker. My passion is science, statistics, and skepticism--a real non-fiction diet! The book didn't give me any better understanding of the author's points than I got from the New Yorker article. The book is "padded". I would cite Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" as a better use of the reader's time and energy.As a side note: What's the aversion to putting some diagrams, tables, charts to clarify an experiment.LOL: The New Yorker cartoon is about 20 years too late!!

I liked the wide spectrum of examples covered by the writer.He gradually get you into the subject.My first ever English book.Very good start for my readings.

Opinions are divided, sometimes sharply divided, about the origin of what is generally referred to as "the scientific method." For present purposes, let's view it a process of rigorous thought by which to conduct scientific inquiry. Perhaps since Aristotle and at least since the 17th century, ts purpose is to differentiate truth from non-truth. Verification is usually conducted through experimentation. That is, testing the given hypothesis or assumption.According to Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman, "This book will help to develop and draw out principles that will help managers make the most of experimental results...Our goal is to help readers gain an appreciation of experiments and avoid common pitfalls. We'll demystify the experimental method, which is at times cast in alarmist tones."Every day in the business world, there are questions to be answered and problems to be solved. Luca and Bazerman provide an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that will help prepare their reader to answer the right questions and to solve the right problems, doing so with the power of experimentation.More specifically, Part I (Chapters 1-3) includes "a broad discussion of the potential of experiments and the factors that have led to their proliferation. In the process, we'll describe the nerdy and fascinating history of the experimental revolution, including the earliest known experiments, advances in scientific methods, the rise of social science labs and field experiments, and the recent proliferation of companies and governments running their own experiments."Next, in Part II (Chapters 4-10), Luca and Bazerman "cover the central role experiments play in the tech sector -- drawing out lessons and best practices from a series of notable experiments covering companies ranging from Airbnb to Uber to eBay." And then in Part III (Chapters 11-15), they examine "how behavioral experiments in organizations are helping to shed light on health, education, and financial decision-making -- leading to processes and products that better account for the many quirks of human behavior."Hopefully, this brief commentary tells you what you need to know so that you can decide whether or not to read this book and then, if read, how you can derive the greatest benefit from it when answering the questions and solving the problems you encounter.I now defer to Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman who review, in the final chapter, the following five overarching themes for those who want to leverage experiments in their organizations:1. "We are at the beginning of ab experimental revolution"2. "Much of this [development] has been good."3. "Because experimentation makes organizations smarter, they have negative effects as well."4. "Experiments are valuable well beyond the tech sector."5. "There is still a lot of work to be done."They also note "four common ways that experiments are helping to improve decisions with organizations" and briefly discuss them. However potentially valuable this book may be, each reader must employ effective experimentation to make that verification by answering questions and solving problems in our data-driven world, both within and beyond a business context.