In the Fall of 2020, my colleague, Prof. Immaculata De Vivo of the Harvard School of Public Health, and I wrote an essay about the public perception of risk and uncertainty, especially with regard to COVID-19. In this post, we are gathering comments from students in the Spring 2021 edition of "GenEd 1112: The Past and Present of the Future," an undergraduate course I teach at Harvard. Students were asked to read the essay, and then comment here on which part(s) of the discussion they expect would be most illuminating for non-quantitatively-inclined readers --and/or to suggest another framing of the issues discussed that would be more effective.
I thought the real-world scenarios that Dr. Goodman utilized to explain low-uncertainty experiences were excellent choices to appeal to a non-quantitative audience. The Russian Roulette example vividly demonstrates a situation in which there is a high risk of death and low uncertainty. A reader that is unfamiliar with statistics can still easily understand the certainty embedded within a system where the bullet will kill with only "one shot."
Conversely, the "lying on a couch" example showcases an everyday activity with an extremely low risk of death, but high certainty as well. This pair of scenarios demonstrates quantitative, statistical truths, in a way that translates the abstract concept of uncertainty into concrete examples.