Asking the Right Questions

Are we even asking the right questions, that's what Howard Raiffa wanted to know. A mathematician who delighted in complex theory and elegant solutions, he was driven all of his professional life to put science and theory to work to answer the questions and solve the problems of "real people in real situations." In his Memoir: Analytical Roots of a Decision Scientist (2011), Howard wrote about his early years: of being athletic and basketball-obsessed, of never reading a book that was not assigned reading, of finding math easy, of his adored father's death when Howard was just 16, and, about how he never got into fights, which he later viewed as an early indication that he had a mediator's temperament. In the 1950s as a faculty member at Columbia University, Howard witnessed the division between those who felt that decision problems should be solved solely by objective scientific methods and those who believed in factoring in subjective, judgmental, and psychological considerations.