However much we want certainty in our lives, it feels as if we live in an uncertain and dangerous world. But are we guilty of wildly exaggerating the chances of some unwanted event happening to us? Are we misled by our ignorance of the reality of risk?
Far too many of us, argues Gerd Gigerenzer – prominent statistician, expert in uncertainty and decision-making. – are hampered by our own innumeracy, while statistics are often presented to us in highly confusing ways. With real world examples, such as the incidence of errors in tests for breast cancer or HIV, or in DNA fingerprinting, and the manipulation of statistics for evidence in court, he shows that our difficulty in thinking about numbers can easily be overcome.
In Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty – see Amazon customer reviews – Gerd Gigerenzer, author of Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions, who explained how simple heuristics can improve medical decision making over much more complex solutions, now clarifies our common misunderstandings surrounding risk and statistics and illustrates how we can learn to make sense of statistics and turn ignorance into insight.
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