These are the chapters in my forthcoming book on Decision Space that are currently available on Amazon. Each chapter is offered as a standalone Kindle Book, and are best read in the order listed. Each chapter includes references as appropriate and study questions to further guide student learning.
The Nature of Decision (Decision Space Book 1)
General Theory (Decision Space Book 2)
Special Relativity (Decision Space Book 3)
General Relativity (Decision Space Book 4)
The Nature of Decision is a short essay on the philosophy of science as it relates to the rules that are necessary for any theory of decision as a “thing in itself” to be truly universal in scope. This chapter may be thought of as a prequel to the General Theory, and may be read by anyone with an interest in decision theory, regardless.
The General Theory of Relativity in Decision Space is a mathematical model that explains decision making as a (discrete) function of time, with basic examples to illustrate the strengths and limitations of the continuous and discrete analogs of the Generalized Bass model of innovation diffusion, on which it is fundamentally predicated. This is what I was looking for in 1980, when I asked several of my professors at Harvard University what all decisions had in common, rather than what made each decision or type of decision different, a question to which no one at the world’s leading university apparently had an answer at that time.
Special Relativity is based on the Deterministic Bass model, in which there are exactly three time periods and k is preset at 0. The data used in this exercise are a large population of 19,600 random decision processes. In a random and chaotic universe, by far the most common type of decision under Special Relativity is the Normal Bass decision, as produced by Frank M. Bass’s original model under his original assumptions.
General Relativity is also based on the Deterministic Bass model, in which there are exactly three time periods, but k is allowed to vary. The data used in this exercise are an even larger population of 249,900 random decision processes. In a random and chaotic universe, by far the most common type of decision under General Relativity is the Strange Bass decision, which is a violation of Frank M. Bass’s original model under his original assumptions, but which conforms almost exactly with the a priori expectations of Everett Roger’s sociological model of the Diffusion of Innovations, and Thomas Kuhn’s conception of paradigm shifts within scientific communities over time.
The next entry in this series will most likely explicate The Butterfly Effect.
Keech Ballard 