Understanding Uncertainty

Welcome to Understanding Uncertainty

david — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Welcome to the site that tries to make sense of chance, risk, luck, uncertainty and probability. Mathematics won't tell us what to do, but we think that understanding the numbers can help us deal with our own uncertainty and allow us to look critically at stories in the media.

'Tails you win: the science of chance' aired on BBC4 at 9pm on October 18th. The video trailer is up on Youtube

If you want to see where all the numbers came from in the programme, we've prepared a page of all the gory details.

Do you have a coincidence story? David Spiegelhalter is collecting them over at http://cambridgecoincidences.org.

Popularity measure as column height
Rare comma events
A 2 sided Higgs?
Data Overload?
Winter Wipeout
Microlives
Doubtful adoption league
Puzzling Chance
A Maserati for £1
Three-fold variation in UK bowel cancer death rates
Cochrane visualisation

Elsewhere on UnderstandingUncertainty:

Court of Appeal bans Bayesian probability (and Sherlock Holmes)

david — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:26:09 +0000

..when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth
(Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four, ch. 6, 1890)

In a recent judgement the English Court of Appeal has not only rejected the Sherlock Holmes doctrine shown above, but also denied that probability can be used as an expression of uncertainty for events that have either happened or not.

What's more dangerous - the bute or the burger?

david — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:28:12 +0000

There is reasonable public outrage at possible criminal conspiracies to adulterate meat products with horsemeat, and additional concerns raised about the presence of the anti-inflammatory known as bute.

Squaring the square, in glass

david — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:24:28 +0000

Here is my latest stained glass effort, seen on a snowy day.

It is a 'square of squares', where all the constituent squares are of different sizes. Here are the dimensions -

Alcohol in pregnancy and IQ of children

david — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:54:04 +0000

Some of the coverage of yesterday's story about drinking in pregnancy and IQ of children was not entirely accurate. The Times reported that 'women who drink even a couple of glasses of wine a week during pregnancy are risking a two-point drop in their child's IQ', and 'children whose mothers drank between 1 and 6 units a week - up to three large glasses of wine - had IQs about two points lower '(than mothers who did not drink).

Is it possible to improve your chances of winning big in the National Lottery?

Dr8Ball — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:51:31 +0000

This was the question I asked myself several years ago when making the decision to play the nation's favourite flutter on a regular basis. I couldn't improve the chances of my chosen numbers being selected but could I give myself a better chance of not sharing my winnings if my numbers were selected? The numbers which come out of the machine are random, but the numbers which people choose are not random (unless selected using the Lucky Dip option).

More lessons from L'Aquila

david — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:18:45 +0000

The L’Aquila story gets even murkier.

The Continuing Tragedy of L’Aquila

david — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 07:42:50 +0000

As in ‘Boffins jailed for not predicting earthquake’, the 6-year sentences and massive fines handed out to the Italian seismologists have been largely portrayed by the media and commentators outside Italy as an attack on science, and the prosecution ridiculed as expecting the scientists to have been able to predict the earthquake.

Rats and GM

david — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:55:13 +0000

With others, I made some comments for the press about the recent paper (abstract, figures and tables freely available here) on cancer in rats fed GM maize and Monsanto's Roundup pesticide.
[ Full paper should also be available here].

10 best practice guidelines for reporting science & health stories

david — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:59:05 +0000

These guidelines were submitted by the Science Media Centre to the Leveson Inquiry into the press.