Decisions under uncertainty always involve risk, in some technical sense of the term “risk.” People use the term differently in everyday speech, though. The term usually refers to some chance of something bad happening. People take risks when they drive recklessly. Nations take risks when they go to war. Investors and entrepreneurs risk losing time and money.

The burner, reheat burner, and afterburner are the only components through which energy is added to the gas turbine.

Practically all thinking involves beliefs in some way. Part II explores three major approaches to the analysis of belief formation: probability theory, the theory of hypothesis testing, and the theory of correlation. It concludes with a chapter on biases in belief formation in general.

Quantitative judgment is the evaluation of cases on the basis of a set of cues (attributes, evidence) with respect to a set of criteria, or a single criterion. It differs from decision making in that the response represents a certain kind of value of each case, not, by itself, a choice. Some judgments involve assigning numbers: for example, assigning grades to students’ essays, salaries to employees, sentences to convicted criminals, ratings to figure skaters, or probabilities to future events.

The normative theory of decision making is closely related to several applied fields. These include decision analysis1 and cost-effectiveness analysis. This chapter and the next discuss the problem of measuring utility for such applied purposes. This chapter concerns basic comparisons of the utility of two outcomes.

Moral thinking is important for decision making as a whole, because most real decisions involve moral issues, at least because they affect other people. The choice of one’s work, for example, is often considered to be a purely personal decision, but we can do various amounts of good or harm to others by choosing different paths through our working lives.

Many of our beliefs concern the relation between one quantity and another. We may ask whether the speed at which galaxies move away from us is related to their distance from the earth or whether IQ is related to income. Often we are concerned with such relationships because we want to decide whether to manipulate one thing in order to affect another.

This chapter and the next concern two common kinds of moral decision problems that have been studied extensively, both normatively and descriptively. The next chapter concerns decisions made by several people, each facing a conflict between what is best for the self and what is best for others. The present chapter is about the allocation of rewards and punishments: who gets what.

The last chapter examined conflicts between self and others. This chapter looks at a different, but analogous, kind of conflict, that between the present and the future. Many of our decisions require us to choose between satisfying our goals for the immediate present and our goals for the future. Should I do the crossword puzzle or work on this book?

A nozzle is sometimes called the exhaust duct or tail pipe, and is the last component of a jet engine through which the air passes. Up to two parallel nozzles are present on an engine: primary and fan (or secondary). In this chapter, both converging and converging– diverging (CD) nozzle types are discussed, and the two nozzles can be any combination of the two types (i.e., converging and converging–diverging, converging and converging, etc.). Recall that the functions of the nozzles are to convert high-pressure, high-temperature energy (enthalpy) to kinetic energy and to straighten the flow so that it exits in the axial direction. It is from this conversion process that the thrust is derived. Because of the high temperatures that a nozzle experiences, materials used in nozzle construction are usually a nickel-based alloy, titanium alloy, or ceramic composite. In Chapter 2, the nonideal effects of nozzles are discussed. The reader is also encouraged to review Appendix C as many of the fundamentals are covered therein. In this chapter, these effects are covered in more detail along with other design considerations.