Thinking, Fast and Slow

10: The Law of Small Numbers
“It is both…without additives”
: Howard Wainer and Harris L. Zwerling, “Evidence That
Smaller Schools Do Not Improve Student Achievement,” 
Phi Delta Kappan
88 (2006):
300–303. The example was discussed by Andrew Gelman and Deborah Nolan, 
Teaching
Statistics: A Bag of Tricks
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
50% risk of failing
: Jacob Cohen, “The Statistical Power of Abnormal-Social
Psychological Research: A Review,” 
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
65
(1962): 145–53.
“Belief in the Law of Small Numbers”
: Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Belief in
the Law of Small Numbers,” 
Psychological Bulletin
76 (1971): 105–10.
“statistical intuitions…whenever possible”
: The contrast that we drew between intuition
and computation seems to foreshadow the distinction between Systems 1 and 2, but we
were a long way from the perspective of this book. We used 
intuition
to cover anything
but a computation, any informal way to reach a conclusion.
German spies
: William Feller, 
Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications
(New York: Wiley, 1950).
randomness in basketball
: Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky, “The
Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences,” 
Cognitive
Psychology
17 (1985): 295–314.
11: Anchors
“‘reasonable’ volume”
: Robyn Le Boeuf and Eldar Shafir, “The Long and Short of It:
Physical Anchoring Effects,” 
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
19 (2006): 393–406.
nod their head
: Nicholas Epley and Thomas Gilovich, “Putting Adjustment Back in the
Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic: Differential Processing of Self-Generated and
Experimenter-Provided Anchors,” 
Psychological Science
12 (2001): 391–96.
stay closer to the anchor
: Epley and Gilovich, “The Anchoring-and-Adjustment
Heuristic.”

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associative coherence
: Thomas Mussweiler, “The Use of Category and Exemplar
Knowledge in the Solution of Anchoring Tasks,” 
Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology
78 (2000): 1038–52.
San Francisco Exploratorium
: Karen E. Jacowitz and Daniel Kahneman, “Measures of
Anchoring in Estimation Tasks,” 
Person {pantion ality and Social Psychology Bulletin
21
(1995): 1161–66.
substantially lower
: Gregory B. Northcraft and Margaret A. Neale, “Experts, Amateurs,
and Real Estate: An Anchoring-and-Adjustment Perspective on Property Pricing
Decisions,” 
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
39 (1987): 84–97.
The high anchor was 12% above the listed price, the low anchor was 12% below that
price.
rolled a pair of dice
: Birte Englich, Thomas Mussweiler, and Fritz Strack, “Playing Dice
with Criminal Sentences: The Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts’ Judicial
Decision Making,” 
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
32 (2006): 188–200.
NO LIMIT PER PERSON
: Brian Wansink, Robert J. Kent, and Stephen J. Hoch, “An Anchoring
and Adjustment Model of Purchase Quantity Decisions,” 
Journal of Marketing Research
35 (1998): 71–81.
resist the anchoring effect
: Adam D. Galinsky and Thomas Mussweiler, “First Offers as
Anchors: The Role of Perspective-Taking and Negotiator Focus,” 
Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology
81 (2001): 657–69.
otherwise be much smaller
: Greg Pogarsky and Linda Babcock, “Damage Caps,
Motivated Anchoring, and Bargaining Impasse,” 
Journal of Legal Studies
30 (2001): 143–
59.
amount of damages
: For an experimental demonstration, see Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J.
Rachlinski, and Andrew J. Wistrich, “Judging by Heuristic-Cognitive Illusions in Judicial
Decision Making,” 
Judicature
86 (2002): 44–50.