The End...

First, Doors, with The End.
Then, McCartney (when he was still cool) and some other guys playing the end of Sgt Pepper's PLUS The End (BEST DRUMS SOLO EVER, despite I'll probably play it better (this version sucks, the drummer is crap)).

Why this?

Well, in 8 minutes the deadline for the last assignment finishes. If you want a link to it, here it is. I am fed up, tired, and very annoyed. However, it has been a lovely semester and I enjoyed it thoroughly. 7 MINUTES!

To all who are reading this, I have several invites to google wave,which is like the god damn future, and so and so on. It works great for doing things together. Pity only 2 of our group used it.

By the way, despite being "the end", etc, I intend to use this blog afterwards (even not counting for any sort of marks or whatever) because I want to. I like ranting in public, and since nobody listens to me anyway look at the feedback for the first wiki we did >_> I just do it in public so the google spider bots from big brother can.

So, lovely to have seen you all, and have a good night. (this looks like the end of the world! omg)

Btw, if you want/need a copy of our presentation, it's attached on the wiki page (above).

MIDNIGHT ALREADY! WOW

Wait, I have one more request!

Please bring my group for J&DM back to life!

From the 4 original members, 2 of them have gone AWOL, and unless the other two surviving members (HI SUZANNE, and myself) do some DOUBLE EXTRA WORK, we are FUBAR pretty much yes.

I love how FUBAR is accepted, but some people would be disappointed if I said "fucked up beyond all repair". Woops!

Dear Christmas guy that gives presents:

Please bring me this ONE thing, I beg of you.

Forbid the use of facebook ANYWHERE at university, specifically on those hooked up computers in the library being used by one of the following:

• Groups of people checking facebook accounts
• Individuals checking facebook accounts
• Groups checking with one individual his/her facebook account
• People using facebook in any form.
  
• All of the above
• Exceptions include:
• People with their own laptops (they don't take space to students who want to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING IN THE LIBRARY FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES OH MY GOD)
• Staff
• Hold on right there. Staff looking at facebook on their spare time is fine. Staff that is supposed to be working and instead is having a nice time on facebook should NOT be fine.

That's about it. There should be some sort of questionnaire/study regarding the use of computers, and how people decide NOT to murder that idiot using facebook whilst they are waiting for any available computer to do their uni stuff.

rant over. Please carry on.

Reading week (random topic week!)

Someone mentioned in the revision week the fact that judgment and decision making studies are always based on the same topics:

• Money (that's what I want)
• MORTAL ASIAN DISEASES (caps locks for effect), in which two sets of population perfectly opposite and equivalent, but presented in a different way (saving lives vs killing them), are genocided multiple times. 
• people giving you randomly money in the street, and asking you to gamble with it
• people giving you mugs and asking you how much would you sell them for
• people asking you how much do you want to pay for that mug the same people gave to someone else seconds ago (bastards! they could have given me the mug, instead of giving it to them!)

And it goes on. Since the statistical chances of that happening (ANY of those, as a matter of fact) is slim-to-none, I fail to see where those studies are helping me. Yes, they have proven that framing effects do exist, but I'm not usually presented with an option and the immediate equivalent opposite nearby, thus probably I won't even know that I've been framed (since you don't know the reference, the whole picture!).

I have decided to compile a list of things that need to be studied by judgment and decision making studies:

1. why I go to work instead of staying in bed sleeping in a cold morning.
2. why I don't mug that person on the street, and instead I go to work in cold mornings.
3. why I spend my money fixing a bike instead of stealing one.
4. why I don't steal a bike nor buy a new one, and instead I spend my money fixing that same bike.
5. why people behave like animals when a radius = 15 feet of any form of public transport
6. why some people prefer Coke rather than Pepsi
7. why I am so lazy on doing the coursework, and I always seem to find that thing that happens to be more interesting than doing the coursework, instead of actually doing it.
8. why different people use different web browsers
9. why some people consider Yoko Ono the breaker of The Beatles, whilst other people don't.
10. why some people vote Labour, and some people don't.
11. why some people read The Sun (no excuse on that one!)
12. why Judgement and Decision making studies don't address these VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS, and instead keep doing their research on trivial things like "money".
13. why I don't consider money important, whilst other people consider it the most importantest [sic] thing ever
14. why some people just can't spell properly, whilst I personally enjoy making some spelling mistakes for effect 
15. why some people are ignorant because of lack of knowledge, and some other people are ignorant because they seem to enjoy the status that it confers them
16. why I should stop writing witty comments and go to eat something instead of er..., well, keep writing witty comments and NOT eat something.

So there you go. Dear oh dear, plenty of things that need research!

Week 6 (13th November post): Endowment Effect

Having read the article named Aspects of Endowment, by Johnson, Häubel & Keinan (full reference: Johnson, E.J., Häubel, G., & Keinan, A. (2007). Aspects of endowment: A query theory of value construction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33 (3), 461-474. [click to download pdf]), some things become clear: People attach more value to whatever belongs to them, even if it has just been given to them, and thus the "emotional attachment" due after lengthy periods of possession time is non existent.

That means that (following the classical experiments), if you are given a mug, you will attribute it a higher value than what you (or an "equal") would pay for it, even if you have had that mug for a mere minute.

Also, that could explain the loss aversion effect that is shown/explained several times, in which people tend to make more conservative choices once they have the "item" (let it be money, mugs, air guitars, knowledge?), by means of not wanting to lose what it's "yours", thus sometimes not making the rational choice (a nice video on this here (which is the same one we added on our wiki page)

Week 5 (6th November post): Decision framing

Just a quick note on this week: Since it is the week in which we based our first assessment, I thought that instead of posting a review here, you could just read the coursework wiki, which works as well, and saves me from dying in the attempt!

Measuring Utility

How useful it is to measure utility! (pun intended).

After having spent at least 40 attempts to recreate the graphs from David Hardman's post, I finally made it! Hooray!

As you can read, the first one is for Certainty equivalence, and the second one for Probability equivalence.

As you can see, both graphs are fairly similar, only with slight differences. On the vertical scale Y you will find the utility values given, whilst on the X scale there are 2 different elements represented.

On the top graph (certainty equivalence), the x axis represents the economical prize (for sure) I'd settle down between obtaining that prize or a chance between £1000 or £0 (with different values for the winnable amounts).

On the bottom graph, probability equivalence, the represented value is the percentage in which I would be indifferent between winning a certain amount for sure or having that said percentage between winning £1000 or £0.

Reading the graphs themselves, you can see that I'm not really a gambler, prefering more than 50% of what I can win before I settle down for the cash prize (I'd rather take £600 than being able to win £1000 with a 50% chance). This is consistent with the fact that I'd chose the same amount in cash (£600) unless I was given a high chance (60%) of winning £1000.

In general, I prefer to have a bit more cash than 50% chance, and at the same time, I still prefer the cash than to get the "big prize", unless a high (HIGH) percentage (I would not risk £800 unless I was given a 70% chance of getting £1000!)

I hope this wasn't "too long; didn't read" for anyone reading this! If you have any questions/comments, post a comment (duh!) in the comment field!