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Top 10 Astonishing Facts About Amos Tversky

Amos Tversky.  

Amos Tversky was born in Haifa, British Palestine (now Israel) on 16 March 1973.

He was the son of veterinarians Yosef Tversky and Jenia Tversky. His parents were immigrants to Israel from Poland and Russia.

He had one sister the name Ruth Tversky who is thirteen years older than him.

His mother, Jenia Tversky, was a social worker who later joined the Knesset since it was established. She represented the Mapai (Workers’ Party).

Amos is Israeli mathematics and cognitive psychologist. Amos focused on three areas of his career: judgment under uncertainty, decision-making under risk, and reason-based choice.

Let us learn more about Amos Tversky and his achievements on the below facts.

1. Amos Tversky was Curious and Learnt alot by Himself as a Boy

Tversky’s mother described him as an independent person who always tried to learn things by himself. She said that Amos was self-taught in many areas such as mathematics.

While in high school Amos attended classes from literary critic Baruch Kurzweil.

In 1961, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.  He obtained his doctorate in 1965 from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

2. The Teaching Career of Amos Tversky 

Na his doctorate, Tversky taught at Hebrew, Michigan and Hebrew University.

He taught Economics and psychology as a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University.

In 1978 Amos taught at Stanford University in the faculty of Psychology whereby he stayed until his death.

3. Amos Served in the Military Forces

Amos served as a leader and member of the Israel Defense  Forces rising to the rank of captain in a Paratrooper unit.

He was awarded Israel’s highest military decoration for the act of bravery. This after he sent one of his soldiers to place an explosive charge under the barbed wire to blast a hole in it.

The soldier lost his nerve due to the fuse that left him freezing to the spot. Amos served him from the charge before it exploded.

In 1956 during the Suez crisis, Amos parachuted in combat zones. in 1967 during the six-day war he commanded an infantry unit. He also served during the Yom Kippur war in 1973 in a psychology field unit.

5. He discovered the Prospect Theory

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman developed the prospect theory in 1979.it states that individuals are more likely to avoid losses than similar gains because losses create a stronger emotional effect than gains.

Amos and Daniel explained 3 main factors that influence decision-making in the prospect theory. These are; certainty, isolation effect and loss aversion.

Certainty in prospect theory explains that when an individual is faced with gain they will choose gain over the risk that rewards an event great gain. Individuals also take greater risks to avoid the certainty of loss.

The isolation effect in prospect theory occurs when people focus on differences between options rather than similarities. This can cause people to miss out on important factors in decision-making.

In prospect theory, loss aversion is where an individual’s fear of losses is greater than their joy of gains. In other words, people prefer to minimize losses than maximize gains.

6. Discovered the Availability heuristic

In 1973, Amos and his close friend Daniel Kahneman discovered the availability heuristic.

They described the availability heuristic as how individuals judge the probability of an event by the information that comes first to their minds and how available they are to individuals, rather than identifying all of the alternatives and working out the real probabilities.

7. Tversky index was Named After Amos Tversky

The Tversky index is an asymmetric similarity measure on sets that compares a variant to a prototype. The Tversky index can be seen as a generalization of Dice’s coefficient and Tanimoto’s coefficient.

8. Honors and Awards Attained by Amos 

In 1980, Amos was elected to the American academy of arts and science. He won the American Psychological Association’s award for distinguished scientific contribution in 1983.

He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Chicago, Yale University, the University of  Göteborg and the state university of the new York at Buffalo.

Amos was awarded a five-year MacArthur Foundation fellowship. This fellowship is usually given to the most talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative work.

He was t the Guggenheim Fellowship which is given to individuals who have shown an exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

In 1985 he was awarded the Foreign associate of the National Academy of sciences.

9. His Personality and Characteristics

Kahneman once stated that Tversky Amos was the freest person he ever knew because of being one of the most disciplined. Several other personalities described Amos as a great person to associate and share ideas with.

The President of Stanford University also praised Amos by stating that he maintained the highest standards of professional ethics. He also stated that Amos’ dedication to his work made him exemplary.

Amos was also a collaborative person who had a habit of working alone at night while other people were deep asleep.

He was also described as a man who wanted to win against all the odds and his opponents. Amos Tversky also believed that human beings lived under uncertainty and in a probabilistic universe.

10. Amos’ Untimely Death

Anos Tversky died in 1996 due to metastatic melanoma. He died at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 59 years old.

He was survived by his wife, Barbara Tversky and their three children.

Amos married Barbara Tversky in 1963. she is a psychologist and was a professor in the human development department at Teachers college.

Amos was also survived by his friend Daniel Kahneman.

Amos Tversky’s research in decision-making challenged Economic theory by showing that people do not behave rationally to maximize their welfare.

As a cognitive psychologist, he convinced Economist to pay attention to what people do instead of what they would do.

His work on human rationality had a major impact on philosophy, statistics, political science, law and medicine.

Amos and Kahneman’s work in framing has brought a positive impact on how doctors view informed consent from patients for medical procedures.

Frame states that small differences in how data is presented to people affect their decisions.