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Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014Risk and Reason Podcasts
This podcast series focuses on how we interpret and communicate probability and uncertainty, produced by All Things …
This podcast series focuses on how we interpret and communicate probability and uncertainty, produced by All Things Considered, NPR. Series podcasts: How Well Does a Drug Work? Look Beyond the Fine Print (~6 min) For Better Treatment, Doctors and Patients Share the Decisions (~9 min) Confusion with A Chance of Clarity: Your Weather Questions, Answered (~2 min) In Facing National Security Dilemmas, CIA Puts Probabilities into Words (~7 min) Pop Quiz: 20 Percent Chance of Rain. Do…
Culture/Society | Decision Psychology | Probability/Bayes | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | High School | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014How Well Does a Drug Work? Look Beyond the Fine Print
The FDA not only approves drugs; it also approves the prescribing instructions that come along …
The FDA not only approves drugs; it also approves the prescribing instructions that come along with them. For some drugs, the wad of paper filled with fine print about the risks and benefits of using the drug is accompanied by a medication guide that is supposed to summarize the main points. This podcast is about two physicians who have been working on fact boxes for drugs that would more concisely convey a medicine's benefits and…
Culture/Society | Decision Psychology | Probability/Bayes | Preferences/Values | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | High School | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014For Better Treatment, Doctors and Patients Share the Decisions
This podcast is about the use of words used by doctors such as “very small risk, …
This podcast is about the use of words used by doctors such as “very small risk, very unlikely, very rare, very likely, and high risk.” One investigator found that only about 20 percent of physicians surveyed stated they were comfortable using numbers and explaining probabilities to patients. Moreover, patients might interpret that word to represent a very different probability. The interview engaged two physicians who sought to improve the involvement of shared decision-making with patients by…
Culture/Society | Decision Psychology | Probability/Bayes | Preferences/Values | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014Confusion with a Chance of Clarity: Your Weather Questions, Answered
Many NPR listeners and readers felt a concise explanation of “a 20 percent chance of …
Many NPR listeners and readers felt a concise explanation of “a 20 percent chance of rain” was missing from the story and podcast about weather forecasts and probability. NPR’s Robert Siegel followed up with two meteorologists for clarity. From meteorologist Eli Jacks, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service: “There's a 20 percent chance that at least one-hundredth of an inch of rain – and we call that measurable amounts of rain – will…
Culture/Society | Decision Psychology | Probability/Bayes | Preferences/Values | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | High School | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014In Facing National Security Dilemmas, CIA Puts Probabilities into Words
In 2011, when President Obama was presented with circumstantial evidence of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, …
In 2011, when President Obama was presented with circumstantial evidence of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, he faced a range of estimates — anywhere from 30 to 95 percent that the man spotted in the compound was actually bin Laden. In this new installment in a series on the intersection of risks and probabilities, Obama's national security quandary takes center stage. Access Podcast: In Facing National Security Dilemmas, CIA Puts Probabilities into Words (~7 min) Access Transcript:…
Culture/Society | Decision Psychology | Probability/Bayes | Preferences/Values | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | High School | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014Pop Quiz: 20% Chance of Rain. Do You Need an Umbrella?
This podcast episode explores how people interpret probability. One of the most common encounters with percent probabilities …
This podcast episode explores how people interpret probability. One of the most common encounters with percent probabilities has to do with weather. Take a moment to consider the question below. It comes from a survey developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who were researching how people understand weather forecasts. Tomorrow's forecast calls for a "20 percent chance of rain." Which of the options below do you think best describes what that means? A.) It…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes | Health/Medicine | High School | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
Brief/PerspectivePodcast, Teaching Resource 2014What the Odds Fail to Capture When a Health Crisis Hits
How well do we understand and act on probabilities that something will happen? A 30 …
How well do we understand and act on probabilities that something will happen? A 30 percent chance of this or an 80 percent chance of that? As it turns out, making decisions based on the odds can be an extremely difficult thing to do, even for people who study the science of how we make decisions. Brian Zikmund-Fisher teaches about risk and probability at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Back in 1998, when he…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes | Preferences/Values | Decision Analysis | Chronic Disease/Risk | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | High School | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Quantitative Literacy -
ArticlePublication 1989Quantitative Meanings of Verbal Probability Expressions
In this article, the meanings of 18 verbal probability expressions were studied in 3 ways: …
In this article, the meanings of 18 verbal probability expressions were studied in 3 ways: (1) frequency distributions of what single number best represented each expression; (2) word-to-number acceptability functions from what range of numbers from 0% to 100% best represented each expression; and (3) number-to-word acceptability functions from which expressions were appropriate for multiples of 5% from 5% to 95%. The results agreed highly with others and were highly consistent across methods. Expressions incorporating…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes | Science/Technology -
ArticlePublication 1990Quantifying Probabilistic Expressions
In this article, authors synthesized 20 different studies to provide numerical averages of opinions on quantitative …
In this article, authors synthesized 20 different studies to provide numerical averages of opinions on quantitative meanings of 52 qualitative probabilistic expressions. These were obtained from people with differing occupations, such as students, physicians, other medical workers, and science writers. The stem probability with modifiers gives a substantial range 6% to 91% and the stem chance might do as well if tried with very. The stems frequent, probable, likely, and often with modifiers produce roughly equivalent sets…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes -
ArticlePublication 2018If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?
People use imprecise words to describe the chance of events all the time — “It’s …
People use imprecise words to describe the chance of events all the time — “It’s likely to rain,” or “There’s a real possibility they’ll launch before us,” or “It’s doubtful the nurses will strike.” Not only are such probabilistic terms subjective, but they also can have widely different interpretations. One person’s “pretty likely” is another’s “far from certain.” Sherman Kent mapped the relationship between words and probabilities. In the best-known version, he showed sentences that…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes -
ArticlePublication 2020Interpretation of Dutch Articles Probability Phrases - Miscommunication Risk
Probabilities and risks play a crucial role in science communication. Doctors inform their patients about …
Probabilities and risks play a crucial role in science communication. Doctors inform their patients about the probability of a successful treatment and the risks of side-effects. Climate researchers want to convey the probability of different climate change scenarios. Science journalists report on estimated probabilities and risks in many different fields. Every day, people make decisions based on these probabilities and risks. Due to this dependence of the decision maker on the information provider, it is…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology -
ArticlePublication 1967Empirical Scaling of Common Numerical Probabilities Verbal Phrases
Probability theory is one tool we use to deal with the uncertainty of future events. …
Probability theory is one tool we use to deal with the uncertainty of future events. The result of a probability calculation of an event that has not yet occurred is a number varying from 0 to 1. This number expresses the likelihood of that event occurring. There are many verbal phrases that also are used to express intuitively the notion of the likelihood of an event. One hundred eighty-eight subjects were given numerical probability estimates…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes | Science/Technology -
ArticlePublication 2019Verbal Probabilities: Very Likely to Be Somewhat More Confusing Than Numbers
People interpret verbal expressions of probabilities (e.g. “very likely”) in different ways, yet words are …
People interpret verbal expressions of probabilities (e.g. “very likely”) in different ways, yet words are commonly preferred to numbers when communicating uncertainty. Simply providing numerical translations alongside reports or text containing verbal probabilities should encourage consistency, but these guidelines are often ignored. In an online experiment with 924 participants, the authors compared four different formats for presenting verbal probabilities with the numerical guidelines used in the US Intelligence Community Directive 203 to see whether any…
Culture/Society | Probability/Bayes | Climate/Environment
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