CDMRA (Centre for Decision Making and Risk Analysis) addresses three fundamental and inter-related questions. First, how should a "rational" person make decisions under risk and uncertainty? This question is at the heart of economics, and often serves as a baseline for evaluating human decision making. Second, how do people actually think about risk and uncertainty, and how do they make decisions? This question draws upon concepts from psychology and sociology. Finally, given what we know about rational decision making and actual behaviour, how can we help people, especially managers, improve their decision making? The purpose here is to combine the rational and the descriptive approaches, in an attempt to resolve some of the paradoxical tensions between gut feeling and logical reasoning, and come up with easy to use prescriptions.

Research at CDMRA employs a variety of techniques to improve decision making, ranging from sharpening intuition to quantitative decision analysis, drawing from disciplines such as economics, mathematics, statistics, psychology, and sociology. The centre is committed to the idea that decision making involves paradoxical tensions between qualitative and quantitative, gut feeling and pure logical reasoning. Consequently, the centre aims to promote a framework that is based not just on technical analysis but also on the qualitative and psychological aspects which are necessary to account for the always present "human" element.