Here's a question for you: How many animals of each kind did Moses take into the ark? Most people have no problem in answering "Two." Of course, Moses didn't take any animals into the ark---Noah did. Your brain is good at filling in gaps in information. Yu cn prbly red ths sntce evn tho it mssng al srts of lttrs. However, sometimes your brain is too good and leads you astray. In most of our … [Read more...]

Andrew Tait recently presented confrontation analysis to an audience of Latin American politicians at the "Liderazgo y Gobernanza" (Leadership and Government) conference hosted by George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management in Washington, DC. … [Read more...]

For those of you who don't take decision-making quite as seriously as we do, you can now turn to Apple's Siri. Ask Siri to Roll the dice and she'll roll two dice for you, reporting Rolling… it's two and six. Or, if you prefer a coin toss, ask her to Flip a coin to which she might respond It's tails. Good luck. … [Read more...]

A recent paper from Korea University Business School suggests that thinking too specifically when trying to predict an outcome makes you less likely to get it right. Researchers compared predictions made about the overall outcome (win/draw/lose) of sporting events with predictions made about the actual scoreline. Scoreline predictions are also overall outcome predictions---e.g. if the score is … [Read more...]

The Global Data on Events Location and Tone (GDELT) project is attempting to document all the important political events in recorded history. It currently contains data on over 250 million events, stretching back to 1979---and the intention is to extend that all the way to 1800. Events are geotagged to city level and contain information on the type of confrontation, the parties involved and the … [Read more...]