Calculated Risks: How to Know When
Numbers Deceive You by Gerd
Gigerenzer
The Truth About, Fingerprints, Dna, Aids, Legal Drugs, And So Much More.
In the tradition of Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, German scientist Gerd
Gigerenzer offers his own take on numerical illiteracy. In Western
countries, most children learn to read and write, but even in adulthood,
many people do not know how to think with numbers, he writes. I focus on
the most important form of innumeracy in everyday life, statistical
innumeracy--that is, the inability to reason about uncertainties and risk.
The author wisely uses concrete examples from the real world to make his
points, and he shows the devastating impact of this problem. In one
example, he describes a surgeon who advised many of his patients to
accept prophylactic mastectomies in order to dodge breast cancer. In a
two-year period, this doctor convinced 90 high-risk women without cancer
to sacrifice their breasts in a heroic exchange for the certainty of saving
their lives and protecting their loved ones from suffering and loss. But

Gigerenzer shows that the vast majority of these women (84 of them, to be
exact) would not have developed breast cancer at all. If the doctor or his
patients had a better understanding of probabilities, they might have
chosen a different course. Fans of Innumeracy will enjoy Calculated Risks,
as will anyone who appreciates a good puzzle over numbers. --John Miller
Personal Review: Calculated Risks: How to Know When
Numbers Deceive You by Gerd Gigerenzer
The book "Calculated Risk: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You",
by Gerd Gigerenzer, will increase your risk aptitude. The 4 1/2 star
(Amazon.com) book does not discuss statistical innumeracy from the IT
perspective, but discusses innumeracy mainly in contemporary medicine,
the justice system, and life in general.
Gerd describes four aspects of innumeracy as follows:
01) Illusion of certainty:
For example: Fingerprint and DNA testing.
02) Ignorance of relevant risks:
For example: "It is more likely that a young American male
knows baseball statistics than that his chances of dying on
a motorcycle trip is about 15 times higher than his chances
of dying on a car trip of the same distance."
03) Miscommunication of risks:
For example: One can communicate the chances that a test
will actually detect a disease in various ways ... The most
frequent way is in the form of a conditional probability: If
a person has cancer, the probability the he/she will test
positive on a screening is 90 percent. Many physicians
confuse that statement with this one: If a person test
positive on a screening, the probability that he/she has
cancer is 90 percent.
04) Drawing incorrect inferences from statistics:
For example: "Consider a newspaper article in which it is
reported that men with high cholesterol have a 50 percent
higher risk of heart attack. The figure of 50 percent
sounds frighting, put what does it mean? It means that out
of 100 fifty-year-old men without high cholesterol,
about 4 are expected to have a heart attack within ten years,
whereas among men with high cholesterol this number is 6. The
increase from 4 to 6 is the relative risk increase, that is,
50 percent. However. if one instead compares the number of
men in the two groups who are not expected to have heart
attacks in the next 10 years, the same increase in risk is
from 96 to 94, that is, about 2 percent (absolute risk). Now
the benefit of reducing one's cholesterol level no longer
looks so great."
Far from being a dry book on risk, uncertainty, and statistics, Gerd
Gigerenzer is entertaining, provocative, irreverent and a bit of a maverick

.
" ... 1 out of every 90 Americans will lose his or her life in a motor vehicle
accident by the age of 75. Most of them die in passenger car accidents."
" ... the terrorist attack on September 11. 2001, cost the lives of some
3,000 people. The subsequent decision of millions to drive rather than fly
may have cost the lives of many more."
"... DNA ... match probability of 1 in 16 for a brother ... "
This book provides "tools for overcoming innumeracy that are easy to
learn, apply, and remember."
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