*This course will not be offered again until FA10*

This course develops the skills of using analytic methods and models to understand real decisions and policy issues, drawn from the realms of natural resource management, public policy, business strategy, politics, negotiations, and conflict.

The perspective is that of a decision-maker seeking better understanding of complex situations she/he faces in managerial and professional life, and practical guidance for making decisions in these situations. The course considers a variety of analytic techniques, methods, and models, particularly those emphasizing uncertainty and strategic interactions in decision-making. Some elementary concepts of modeling are also introduced, with emphasis on dynamics, uncertainty, and optimal choice under constraints.

The emphasis throughout is on fundamental concepts, insights, and intuitions, often drawing the material for discussion from current issues and controversies that we find in the newspaper. Formalism and computation are kept to the minimum necessary to convey the basic concepts. We especially practice basic skills of abstraction and formulation: recognizing situations where some simple analytic concept is potentially applicable to some messy reality; abstracting the essential characteristics of the messy reality to develop a relevant model; and critically examining the model's implications in light of our understanding and judgments about the messy reality. We often move iteratively between thinking about complex messy realities and simple models, using each perspective to probe, critique, and improve our understanding from the other perspective..