Dec

29

Chance, luck, and ignorance: how to put our uncertainty into numbers - David Spiegelhalter, Oxford Mathematics

We all have to live with uncertainty. We attribute good and bad events as ‘due to chance’, label people as ‘lucky’, and (sometimes) admit our ignorance. In this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture David shows how to use the theory of probability to take apart all these ideas, and demonstrate how you can put numbers on your ignorance, and then measure how good those numbers are.

Coffee cup he got from MI5 showing verbal-numerical scale they use.

Also: The Art of Statistics

William Huggins offers:

i like to give this guide to my students for whom English is a 2nd/3rd (sometimes 4th+ language).

Kim Zussman is unimpressed:

David Spiegelhalter was Cambridge University's first Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk.

Translation: He is the most qualified of the vast array of those who don't know WTF they are talking about, but are knighted to tell us.

Peter Grieve responds:

I heard a story a decade ago about one of the big decision theorists, I think it was a Harvard professor. He was offered a position somewhere else, and was agonizing about whether to accept it. A colleague suggested he use his decision theory, and he said "Come on! This is serious!" I've no idea about the veracity of the story, or who was involved.

Alex Castaldo clarifies:

You are talking about Howard Raiffa. The story was told by another professor, although apparently Raiffa later denied that he had said it.


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