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Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty
 
 
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Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty [Kindle Edition]

Gerd Gigerenzer (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews) |
Print List Price: £9.99
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"This is an important book, full of relevant examples and worrying case histories. By the end of it, the reader has been presented with a powerful set of tools for understanding statistics...anyone who wants to take responsibly for their own medical choices should read it" - New Scientist

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"This is an important book, full of relevant examples and worrying case histories. By the end of it, the reader has been presented with a powerful set of tools for understanding statistics...anyone who wants to take responsibly for their own medicalchoices should read it" - New ScientistHowever much we crave certainty, we live in an uncertain world. But are we guilty of wildly exaggerating the chances of some unwanted event happening to us? Are ordinary people idiots when reasoning with risk?Far too many of us, argues Gerd Gigerenzer, are hampered by our own innumeracy. Here, he shows us that our difficulties in thinking about numbers can easily be overcome.
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I picked up this book because it was short-listed for the Aventis science prize. It is an interesting book that aims to assist the reader in becoming literate in the sort of risk assessment statistics we encounter all the time e.g. 'this drug reduces your risk of heart disease over 10 years by 50%'. It focuses on understanding conditional probabilities, using natural frequencies to assess uncertainty and the difference between absolute and relative risks.

Although it does help you to understand everyday statistics of this nature better, it only appears to make about 3 points throughout the entire book. Most of the chapters just recycle the same ideas using various, mainly medical, examples. A punchy 20 page book would have been just as informative, less repetitive and thus more interesting and effective.

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book to while away time on a plane journey to the USA on holiday, and liked it so much that when I was asked to give an informal introductory Stats talk to a group of doctors in New York, I recommended it to them and worked through the example in Fig 4-2.
The book does a very good job of explaining Franklin's Law (nothing is certain except death and taxes), illustrating it with important problems like HIV tests and DNA testing. The idea that even DNA tests are not infallible will come as news to some! It also discusses cost-benefit issues in diagnostic tests and the way to explain risk in a way that is not misleading, specifically emphasising the value of ARR and NNT over RR reduction.
All in all, the book seems to me an essential contribution to public education, especially for doctors and lawyers.
Most highly recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book takes a simple premise - that ordinary people, even scientists and doctors - are frequently confused by statistics. The author shows how it is possible to reduce this confusion by presenting the statistics in a different format. In particular, the book concentrates on medical statistics, dispelling a number of myths about the effectiveness of certain treatments and the risk of certain diseases.

In fact, the treatment of the topic is repetitive. Each chapter tends to prove the same thing, without offering any new insights. Although a few revelations about the number of incidences of some diseases (including HIV and breast cancer) are interesting, there is a risk that some readers could use these to justify taking (or not taking) treatment without really understanding the issues involved - precisely what the author is striving to avoid.

The most interesting chapter of all is the one on games, which offers potentially hours of endless fun for the reader, who can use the techniques described therein to win money off colleagues!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Bayes' theorem made easy
Bayes' theorem is the mathematical equation that shows how probabilities change in the light of new evidence. Read more
Published 3 months ago by P Newall
Easy to read!
Good book! I haven't finished yet but the 1st 1/2 is very focused on communicating breast cancer. It is an easy to read book but a bit heavy based on the topic that the Author... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Maria Trouli
Insights into turning data into understanding
This book is highly recommended for anyone who has to use numbers to communicate information or who tries to interpret numeric information to make informed judgements. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2009 by Steven Unwin
very repetitive
I bought this because it was recommended in Ben Goldacre's Bad Science as a good book on research, irrationality and mathematics. Read more
Published on 31 Jan 2009 by Russell
The knack of statistics
Gerd Gigerenzer's main message is this: when it concerns statistics, better speak about frequencies than about percentages. Read more
Published on 21 Jan 2008 by Christian Jongeneel
Everyone should read this book
While I have some quibbles with the style and layout (the book essentially comes down to one point which is repeated several times), this is a book everyone should... Read more
Published on 11 July 2003
essential reading
This book is the perfect antidote to the mistakes of reasoning we are all prone to, when faced with uncertainty and rare events. Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2003 by "madaboutmaths"
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Popular Highlights

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&quote;
Many a physician confronts the patient with an apparent choice between certainty and risk rather than a choice between risks. &quote;
Highlighted by 4 Kindle users
&quote;
When thinking and talking about risks, use frequencies rather than probabilities. &quote;
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&quote;
For example, a 25 percent reduction means many lives saved if the disease is frequent, but only a few if the disease is rare. &quote;
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