You Think You're Thinking — But Are You?

Here's a question. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 together. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? If your gut said ten cents, you're in good company — and you're wrong. The correct answer is five cents. Most people, including highly educated ones, get it wrong on the first pass. And that small, embarrassing moment of miscalculation is exactly what Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is about. Published in 2011, the book is the life's work of a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who spent decades studying why human beings — despite being remarkably intelligent — make predictably bad decisions. Not random mistakes. Predictable ones. Ones you can set your watch to.