Communicating risk and uncertainty: what could the 'real' world teach education?

Communicating risk and uncertainty: what could the 'real' world teach education?

Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk, and Professor of Biostatistics, University of Cambridge

Monday 29 September 2014, 5.30pm

Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge

Risk-communication is a hot topic, whether it concerns the benefits and harms of screening or the chance of a catastrophic earthquake. It is challenging to explain both unpredictability and uncertain knowledge to the public, and yet these are also essential elements in education in probability and statistics. I shall argue that current approaches in communicating risk and uncertainty can contribute substantially to educational practice.

In particular, Gigerenzer’s recommendation for ‘natural frequencies’ – whole-number outcomes starting from a defined population of cases - can be adapted to teaching probability based on a natural sequence of stages: empirical multiple narratives from experimentation represented as 2-way tables and frequency trees, to expected outcomes in multiple future experiments, and finally to probability trees. Issues of relative and absolute risk continually arise in topical stories, and representations that make these transparent are as relevant in the classroom as in the news. 'Expected frequencies' now feature in the GCSE Maths syllabus, and I shall illustrate the type of problem that can be solved using these techniques.

About the speaker:

Professor David Spiegelhalter's background is in medical statistics, particularly the use of Bayesian methods in clinical trials, health technology assessment and drug safety. In his post he leads a small team (UnderstandingUncertainty.org) that attempts to improve the way in which the quantitative aspects of risk and uncertainty are discussed in society. He works closely with the Millennium Mathematics Project in Cambridge in trying to develop an exciting treatment of probability and risk for mathematics education. He gives many presentations to schools and others, advises organisations and government agencies on risk communication, and is a regular commentator on current risk issues. He presented the BBC4 documentary ‘Tails you Win: the Science of Chance”, and in 2011 competed in Winter Wipeout on BBC1. He has over 190 refereed publications and is co-author of 6 textbooks, as well as The Norm Chronicles (with Michael Blastland). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Risk Management, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005 and awarded an OBE in 2006. He was also knighted in the Queen's Honours list 2014 for services to statistics.

The event is free but admission is by ticket only.