19 — Decision Traps

Mental Accounting#

◐ Behavioral
◆ The PatternTreating money differently based on its source or intended use (Richard Thaler).

Mental accounting (Richard Thaler, 1985) — treating money differently based on arbitrary categories.

Examples:
House money effect: Profits from winning trades are risked more freely — "it's house money"
Found money: A tax refund or bonus spent more frivolously than salary
Separate buckets: "My retirement account" vs. "my trading account" — but it's all your wealth

Money is fungible. A dollar of profit = a dollar of salary = a dollar of savings.
Pattern bridge: Treating money differently based on its source or bucket. In ML, batch normalization per-group treats each layer’s activations as separate accounts. In statistics, Simpson’s paradox shows how grouping changes conclusions.
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