Uncertainty
Daniel Davies links to a good speech by Mervyn King about uncertainty, and the need to be more open about what is known and what is not known. It ends with this rather good quote:As Bertrand Russell said, “The whole problem of the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts"
The speech mentions the case of the a woman who saw both her two children die. The Jury were told that the chance of this happening was 1 in 73 million, which essentially is 1 in 8 million and a bit squared, where 1 in 8 million is the chance of one cot death happening.
It is said this was taken to be mean that the chance of the woman being innocent (forget other possibilities other than murder) were 1 in 73 million.
There were two clear problems. First it assumed that the events were independent, which they probably weren't. But second, to quote King,
“it illustrates vividly that the interpretation of ex post outcomes depends critically on understanding the ex ante process which generated those outturns.”
posted by Matthew @ 12/15/2004 08:51:00 AM
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