So 30 years ago today, as a matter of fact, not just 30 years ago today, probably to the hour.

So I defended my doctoral dissertation at Cornell

and the defense was on January 21st, 1994,

so it's exactly 30 years ago. I remember my wife yesterday asked me do

remember what day it fell on like what day of the week and I said to her oh I

think it was on a Tuesday and then she checked and it turned out to be on a Tuesday.

So and it was in the afternoon. I think it was probably a bit earlier. I think it was maybe from

two to four if I'm not mistaken so probably by now I had

finished or just about finished and I remember as they as the committee

asked me to step outside the room so that they can deliberate and then they

opened the door and asked me to come back in and so on.

My doctoral supervisor was the first one who approached me and said,

she put out his hand and said, congratulations doctor. So that was the first time that I switched from Mr to Doctor in obtaining the PhD.

The title of the PhD was the adaptive use of stopping policies in sequential consumer choice.

I mean saying really consumer is too restrictive because really the doctoral dissertation could be applied in consumer choice,

but of course it could be applied to any choice. I later used it for made choice. You can use it for political choice.

And let me set the ground to what that dissertation was all about.

The dissertation is in the area of psychology of decision-making or behavioral decision theory. It's really a combination of cognitive

psychology and experimental psychology and specifically what I was trying to do in the dissertation is study what are called

stopping decisions and now let me explain what I mean by stopping decisions and then I will for those of

you who didn't notice in the the alert to today's X spaces. I took screenshot from four, so please have those

handy if you're able to. So right next to the alert for today's X-spaces I've got four screenshots of slides that I have used in my lectures.

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