Jeffrey Helzner
Personal
I grew up around Philadelphia where I attended Friends Select School. I am married to Elizabeth Purchase. We met while we were undergraduate students at Sarah Lawrence College. We have two wonderful children. Jacob was born in February of 2003 while we were living in Pittsburgh, where I was doing a Ph.D. in Logic, Computation and Methodology at Carnegie Mellon and Beth was doing a Ph.D. in Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. Ben was born in December of 2005, after we moved to New York so that I could take a job at Columbia.
Some research interests
My primary research interests focus on the foundations of rational choice and methodological issues involved in the evaluation of models of decision making. Within these broad areas, many of my interests concern imprecision and indeterminacy as they relate to models of decision making. I also have a secondary interest in logic, especially as it relates to my primary interests.
Selected articles
"On the Representation of Error" , Synthese (to appear)
"Ambiguity Aversion: The Explanatory Power of Indeterminate Probabilities" (with Horacio Arlo Costa), Synthese
"On the Application of Multiattribute Utility Theory to Models of Choice" , Theory and Decision
"Expected Content", Review of Symbolic Logic
"Indeterminacy and Choice", Foundations of the Formal Sciences VI: Reasoning about Probabilities and Probabilistic Reasoning
"Comparative Ignorance and the Ellsberg Phenomenon" (with Horacio Arlo Costa), Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Imprecise Probabilities and their Applications
"Transfer Principles in Nonstandard Intuitionistic Arithmetic" (with Jeremy Avigad), Archive for Mathematical Logic
Some other interests
I really enjoy music. My favorite genres tend to be progressive metal (e.g. Mastodon, Isis) and progressive rock (e.g. Yes, King Crimson), but many of the artists I like do not fit into either of these categories (e.g. John Coltrane, Allan Holdsworth, and Steve Reich). I also like to watch ice hockey, especially the Pens and the Flyers. I have a great appreciation for the beers of the Chouffland.
Other links that I like to check
Skeptic, Improbable Research, Onion