Why We Make Mistakes

There are many books on 'behavioral economics', but Why We Make Mistakes by a journalist is a pretty good summary. Indeed, I was looking at Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and found this book much more succinct. Fun facts from the book:

• There is a 1 in 1 million chance of finding a gun in an airport check
• people don't remember names, as opposed to the jobs or families of a person
• 80% of calls to a corporate help desk are for lost passwords
• Simply changing pill colors from white to red and black makes them more distinctive
• People recall their specific grades in school with an upward bias
• Men report a median of 7 sex partners, women 4
• 84% of doctors thought others were biased by self interest, whereas only 16% thought they were biased by self interest
• The most common airplane accident is 'controlled flight into terrain', or flying a plane into the ground
• When asked to pick a movie viewed later, more choose highbrow movies; choosing movies now we choose lowbrow movies
• being first on the ballot adds about 3% to a candidates vote
• As something becomes familiar, the more we tend to notice it less
• We see things not as they are, but as they ought to be.
• Experts make mistakes expecting patterns that aren't there.
• Depressed people are realists, happy people are overconfident
• People learn more from summaries than from reading entire chapters
• A horse race handicapper does as well with 5 bits of information as having 10, 20, or 40, though his confidence increases with the number of information bits available
• Hope impedes adaptation. Someone with a potentially reversible colonostemy is more unhappy after 1 year than someone with a 1 year irreversible colonostemy.
• When you are trying to make judgments about complex systems, things that are easily observed are overweighted.
• Money does not improve efficiency of large organizations (ie, giving everyone more money).
• Money does increase the ability of individuals to withstand discomfort in tests.