Product Description

"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 Scientist However 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21499 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"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

About the Author
Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Centre for Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition (ABC) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and a former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Interesting but a bit repetitive
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.

An essential contribution to public education
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.

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. It offers itself as a way of turning ignorance into insight, and follows through on the offer.

What if you have a positive mammogram, or test positive for HIV? Do you know how likely it is that you have actually got breast cancer, or that you are indeed HIV positive? Most of us don't have the foggiest, yet this is the sort of information we all need desperately.

There is a simplification at the heart of the book - not all statistical information can be summarised effectively using natural frequencies - and the author is not a mathematician and gives no sign that he understands that this is a simplification. But often enough natural frequencies will do the trick, and you will find no better explanation of how to think than this book.

What can I say? Everyone should read it. That means you!