Understanding Uncertainty

Welcome to Understanding Uncertainty

david — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:14:08 +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.

The UK Meteorological Office has put up a questionnaire on different ways of communicating uncertainty in short-term weather forecasts. I know which ones I prefer, but won't try and influence anyone [this site may go down temporarily, but should be available by Friday 15th January]
This year's Darwin lecture series in Cambridge is on Risk: 8 speakers on all aspects, starting on January 15th.
There is an excellent blog from the Genetic Geneologist (Blaine Bettinger) that very generously puts up details of their increased risk of Type 2 diabetes obtained from genome scans from two companies using a variety of communication formats.
We're supporting an exciting schools programme led by Nadia Baker of the Millennium Mathematics Project called What are the Odds? - the Hands on Risk and Probability Show. Follow the link for more information and to find out how to get your school involved.
Venturing into video one late Summer day, we pointed a couple of cameras at David delivering a dozen short talks on the issues explored in our animations. As we edit these, we're releasing them on the undunc channel on YouTube - about once a week. Do have a look and subscribe to the channel.

There will be a lot more things appearing - see About Us.

Quantifying the Risk of Natural Catastrophes

slatchman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:13:05 +0000

How do companies prepare for the financial impact of natural catastrophes? How can they possibly have an idea of what the potential cost can be for events that haven't yet happened? Shane Latchman explains the way companies in the insurance industry are using catastrophe models to help make sense of a very uncertain future...

Monkeys and Shakespeare

david — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:17:50 +0000

I was lucky enough to get included in the Horizon programme on Infinity last night, talking about the old monkey-Shakespeare issue. Of course most of my rambling contribution was (rightly) cut, so here’s a few background details for anyone interested.

The risks of Eggstasy

david — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:43:35 +0000

There has been extensive coverage of a box of 6 eggs found to be all double-yoked:an event that was given odds of a trillion to 1 against. This was based on the British Egg Information Service saying 0.1% ( 1 in 1000) eggs were double-yoked, and so getting six of these required these odds to be multiplied 6 times. In fact this gives 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, but which was reported as a trillion (now usually taken as 1,000,000,000,000).

The Daily Mail did a good demolition of this story, and it is a good example of what can go wrong when people try and work out chances.

Darwin College 2010 lecture series on Risk

gmp26 — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:58:53 +0000

The Darwin College lecture series this year is on the subject of Risk.

Professor Risk

gmp26 — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:41:13 +0000

David Spiegelhalter's proper title is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He is in two minds (literally) about playing it safe or chucking caution to the wind. Decisions, decisions!? Are bacon sandwiches really that dangerous and is it wise to drive when you love cycling? David shows us how to use statistics to face up to life's major risks.

Can you rank hospitals like football teams?

david — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:16:00 +0000

Elsewhere on this site we talk about the difficulties in making reliable rankings of footbal teams, but at least people can agree that winning matches is a reasonable way to measure the quality of a team. Hospitals are different - even something 'obvious' such as mortality statistics may not be the best way to asses patient safety. This is an article that appeared in the Times on December 2nd, with suitable links added.

What are the chances of successful fertility treatment?

david — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:50:30 +0000

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) recently launched their ‘Choose a Fertility Clinic’ website which provides a huge range of information about each clinic licenced by the HFEA, with a lot of fairly complex statistics. The website carefully avoids direct comparisons and any hint of a ‘league table’, but here we look at whether we can draw statistically-valid conclusions about whether some clinics, for whatever reason, really do provide higher chances of success than others.

Football League Tables

gmp26 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:06:10 +0000

In this video David Spiegelhalter talks about uncertainty in major league football. How much is a team's league position due to luck and how much is due to skill?

Chris Jordan: Picturing Excess

gmp26 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:33:46 +0000

Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics -- like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.