Horizon on Human Decision-Making

Horizon (BBC 2 Tonight 9pm) dishes up an interesting edition tonight on the rationale behind humans decision making process. Can we boil down human behaviour to a mathematical equation?

We are bad at making decisions. According to science, our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice. And that’s assuming that we haven’t already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!

Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil!

There are some examples for you to try on the website. Click on the link to decide, using maths, whether you should purchase that new plasma TV.

Or should you apologise for your actions?

And finally, should you join the gym to burn off those excess calories?

This looks a fascinating program on human behaviour. Watch the trailer here, or of course if you miss it, it will be avaliable onn BBC iplayer for the next 7 days.