The danger of treating COVID-19 as an astronomically rare and improbable event is that we will treat it as such and fail to prepare for the next pandemic. And there will be another pandemic.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Statistics probability and risk
Displaying all articles
Sometimes statistics and probability can produce unexpected or counter-intuitive results. If we're hoping to use numbers to make good decisions, we should be wary of the traps.
We naturally overestimate the risk of rare events, like shark attacks or terrorism. But there are things you can do to think more rationally about the real risk.
Here are some all-too-common errors when it comes to interpreting statistics, and how to avoid them.
Things tend to revert back to their typical state over time, so we should be careful not to mistake that for some other trend.
Top contributors
-
Professor of Cognitive Psychology, UNSW
-
Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology
-
Professor, Social Psychology, The University of Queensland
-
Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Technology Sydney
-
Senior Lecturer in Psychology, UNSW
-
Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Queensland
-
Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, UNSW
-
Managing Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, Western University
