Tag Archives: wrong decisions

The human brain is capable of 1016processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn’t mean our brains don’t have major limitations. The cheap calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless  – plus, we’re subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches …

From a purely logical standpoint, it does not make a lot sense to buy a lottery ticket. In a 6/49 game, the probability of hitting the jackpot is 1:14’000’000 or about 0,00051 %. Still, millions play each week. ‘Irrational’ decisions led to the emerge of a field in economics called  ‘behavioral finance’ that explains why we humans tend to make wrong decisions on …