Let’s Write a Decision Intelligence Book… Maybe?

Exploring the Irony of a Decision Scientist’s Dilemma

Cassie Kozyrkov
10 min readAug 15, 2023

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For the past year, I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a book.

Except that I — despite my decision science background — can’t seem to decide whether to write the damned thing and, if I do, whether the book should be about decision-making or data science or both. Or if there should even be a book. Trust me, the irony is not lost on me.

So, to celebrate that irony, let me take you on a tour of my thought process as I decide.

Image created by the author.

There are plenty of great books out there, but they’re all not-quite-what I hoped they’d be when I opened them. Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m an alien with a niche idea about what’s worth knowing, but on the off-chance that enough of you feel the same way, I thought I’d put our heads together and see what we come up with.

But first, let me tell you how I’m thinking about my decision. That’s right, let’s decide together about a decision book. Things get fun when we go meta. (But not too Meta.)

I’ll throw in a few little decision-making nuggets along the way, while avoiding pictures and summary quotes to make the book-like experience more authentic for you.

Questions to answer

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Cassie Kozyrkov

Chief Decision Scientist, Google. ❤️ Stats, ML/AI, data, puns, art, theatre, decision science. All views are my own. twitter.com/quaesita