Behind NOISE and Beyond The Book: Linnea Gandhi Shares her New Course on Noise

May 26, 2021

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Linnea Gandhi is one of our favorite people to talk with and we had the pleasure of welcoming Linnea back to Behavioral Grooves recently. We last spoke to her in 2018 when she confessed to having a crush on statistics (a crush she clearly still harbors!) Since that time though, she has made a significant contribution to the infamous new book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein (https://amzn.to/3heyr5r). Linnea served as the chief of staff; project managing, researching and editing the groundbreaking work on the book. When we interviewed Olivier Sibony about Linnea’s contribution, he was glowing with compliments about her:

“it took someone as miraculously organized, helpful and smart, always positive and in a consistently cheerful, good mood. And I can't imagine anyone else on the planet who could have pulled this off, but Linnea did. So she's amazing.”

Linnea is a researcher, teacher, and practitioner of behavioral science in business settings. And she’s obsessed with error. Studying it, fixing it, and even embracing it – to enable better decisions by individuals and organizations.

Linnea is passionate about bridging the gap between behavioral science in academia and its application in the real world. She teaches decision science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, studies it as part of her PhD at the Wharton School of Business, and consults on it through her company, BehavioralSight (https://behavioralsight.teachable.com/). This foothold in both worlds, has given Linnea the expertise for her current project which sees her teaching the topic of noise in an “edu-tainment” online video course.

The tremendous new course (we got a sneak peak...it’s fantastic) is called Beyond Bias: How Noise May Be Drowning Out Your Decision Making Accuracy which is due to be published in June 2021. The course is purposefully designed for busy professionals who want to understand noise and how to mitigate it in organizations. Linnea and her team have meticulously planned the course videos so that they are short yet informative and entertaining. She is well aware that they are competing with Netflix for people’s attention!

Our conversation weaves in some endearing anecdotes about her personal experience of working with Kahneman, Sunstein and Sibony on the book. As well as some of the hurdles of working (and recording) from home that many of us can identify with from the last year. But Linnea’s passion for her work on noise and her enthusiasm for statistics is contagious. So much so that it has almost convinced Kurt to start reading about statistics in his spare time (almost!)

We hope you enjoy listening to Linnea’s work in behavioral science. At Behavioral Grooves, we are passionate about bringing you cutting edge interviews with the world’s best behavioral science practitioners, researchers and authors. If you would like to help support our work, please consider becoming a Behavioral Grooves Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/behavioralgrooves, we really appreciate the support.

Topics We Discuss With Linnea

(3:07) Speed Round

(6:39) About Linnea’s new course on NOISE

(16:45) Why humans don’t see easily see randomness

(19:58) Working behind the scenes on NOISE

(22:48) How did the authors first collaborate on NOISE

(26:53) What finally convinced Linnea to get a PhD

(36:12) Decision Hygiene and Linnea’s favorite technique

(41:20) Music

(43:20) Grooving Session

Links

“Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment” by Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein, 2021 https://amzn.to/3heyr5r

Statistics As Principled Argument https://amzn.to/3uhRU8c

Linnea’s Video Course on Noise (coming in June 2021) “Beyond Bias: How Noise May Be Drowning Out Your Decision Making Accuracy” https://www.behavioralsight.com/online-learning

Episode 224: Why Is Noise Worse Than Bias? Olivier Sibony Explains https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/noise-with-olivier-sibony/

Episode 38: Linnea Gandhi: Crushing On Statistics https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/linnea-gandhi-crushing-on-statistics/

Daniel Kahneman https://amzn.to/2QQksId

Cass Sunstein https://amzn.to/3uj61Kp

Olivier Sibony https://amzn.to/3u8LBnp

Noise: How to Overcome the High, Hidden Cost of Inconsistent Decision Making https://hbr.org/2016/10/noise

Episode 176: Annie Duke on How to Decide https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/annie-duke-on-how-to-decide/

Tania Lombrozo (Explanations) https://psych.princeton.edu/person/tania-lombrozo

Mona Lisa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa

A Structured Approach to Strategic Decisions https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/a-structured-approach-to-strategic-decisions/

Duncan Watts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_J._Watts

Angela Duckworth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Duckworth