Behavioural experiments by Ollie Hulme’s group in Copenhagen show that people change their implied risk preferences when choosing between repeated multiplicative versus additive gambles. The shifts are consistent with a model assuming that the subjects intend to maximise the time averaged growth rate of wealth, however, such model is not cognitively realistic.

In this talk, Colm Connaughton (London Mathematical Laboratory) will present Lay Len Ching’s recent work exploring the extent to which a class of heuristic decision models known as fast-and-frugal trees can be trained to play the Copenhagen experiment. The findings suggest that simple heuristics may provide a cognitively plausible model for how people adapt to the changing risk dynamics in the experiment.

This talk can be thought of as a follow-on from Özgür Şimşek’s seminar on the design of fast-and-frugal trees.

The seminar was hosted by James King (Science Practice) and Emilie Rosenlund Soysal (London Mathematical Laboratory).

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