The Yellow Pad: Making Better Decisions in an Uncertain World

Evaluating probability is key to navigating the complexities and uncertainties of modern life, contends Rubin (In an Uncertain World), former U.S. Treasury Secretary and cochairman of Goldman Sachs, in this earnest if flawed offering. He shares how he’s made major professional decisions by writing on a yellow legal pad “a list of possible outcomes in one column, and my estimated odds of each outcome occurring in the other,” and then choosing the option promising the greatest reward at the highest probability. Recognizing how biases influence decision-making is crucial, he argues, noting how his awareness of his risk aversion enables him to compensate for when he overweighs risk in his tabulations. However, the yellow pad approach sometimes gets dropped in favor of dubiously relevant anecdotes from Rubin’s career, such as when he recounts adopting a more supportive stance toward his colleagues to make the jump from arbitrage to management at Goldman Sachs, a change that had little to do with navigating uncertainties. Additionally, the dry prose dulls the impact of stories from the author’s extraordinary career (even an account of a Goldman Sachs partner’s arrest for insider trading falls flat). Torn between a standard business memoir and a broader program for navigating uncertainty, this struggles to find its footing. (May)