Summary & Review: Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: Mathematical Psychology, Behavioral Economics, and The Undoing Project

by BreakfastBookClub

Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball examined the Oakland A’s statistical approach to build a winning baseball team and made a huge impact in the world of sports & popular culture. Most salient to Lewis, however, was the critique he received that he had ignored the groundbreaking work done by two Israeli psychologists—Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky—which provided the theoretical basis for the story of Moneyball and anticipated the very process the Oakland A’s and others in their wake would undertake to re-evaluate their understanding of losses and gains. In effect, Moneyball may have been a huge success for Lewis, but he felt he only told part of the story.

Thus, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds is Michael Lewis’s attempt to chronicle the lives of the two men who laid the groundwork for his bestseller. Their lives are told individually as well as together, as the book attempts to serve as a populist primer for their academic theories. Beginning with Daniel Kahneman—a Parisian-born Jew who grew up with his family on the run from the Nazis—and then onto the life of Amos Tversky—a native Israeli—defining moments in their respective biographies are presented, all with an eye to how these facts pertain to their scientific biographies and contributions to the fields of behavioral economics and mathematical psychology.

Summary: The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Summary
The Psychology of Moneyball
Confirmation Bias In The NBA
Introducing Danny Kahneman
Danny’s Role In The Israeli Army
Giving Up On Studying Personality
Introducing Amos Tversky
Amos Serves In The Military
Amos Gets Into Psychology
Returning To Israel
Danny’s Teaching
Danny and Amos Collide
Law of Small Numbers
Rules Of The Mind
Errors Of The Mind
Regression To The Mean
Systematic Bias
Selective Matching
Returning To Israel, Again
Prospect Theory
The Friendship Unravels
The Simulation Heuristic
The Undoing Project

This companion reader includes:
* Main Themes
* Detailed Summary
* Honest Review & Commentary

48 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 19, 2016

Reviews

[Herman Bosman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Undoing Project

Bit too cryptic - not enough examples used to explain concepts.
Lay-out could be improved with bullet points.
Overall a great summary.