Choose quickly: a free $10 Amazon gift card or a $20 gift card for $7?
And: a ball and a bat together cost $1.10, and the bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
The first example is from Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and the second from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.
I thoroughly enjoyed both of these but found the latter a deeper, richer book. Kahneman has a different, more humane take on 'irrationality' and describes it more as a set of heuristics that work well most of the time and in most situations ... but not for all examples.
Anyone interested in how his or her mind works ... or how the mind of the boss or your spouse or your child's mind works ... will get a bang out of both of these, I think. Happy and rational reading!
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