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.
(1) The explanation of how humans typically categorize likelihood into three broad categories (it will happen, it won’t happen, and it might happen) might be particularly illuminating for non-quantitatively-inclined readers. This section helps bridge the gap between everyday thinking and the more precise, numerical approach used in risk assessment. This leads into the second point, which is that (2) Instead of framing the discussion around the cold, hard statistics of risk and uncertainty, it might be more effective to frame it in terms of personal stories or case studies. For instance, discussing how different individuals perceive and react to the same statistical risk could provide insights into the emotional and psychological aspects of risk assessment. This approach could make the statistical information more relatable and less intimidating.