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s are very valuable in... low probability, high impact events. Every time you cross the road there is a low probability and high impact that you're g… - David Spiegelhalter
" "s are very valuable in... low probability, high impact events. Every time you cross the road there is a low probability and high impact that you're going to get run over. ...You take extra precautions to reduce... very small risk to... even smaller. ...[O]n an absolute risk scale, you [might] say, "Oh, I'm not going to bother... It's not worth doing..." but... by making that low risk even smaller, it's... valid... [P]eople discovered this... doing earthquake predictions... [T]he absolute risk... it's always low. They're very unpredictable... but telling people it's 10 times normal, or 100 times normal, people will act... appropriately. ...They won't panic. They won't rush away. ...[I]n Italy ...they ...sleep outside for a bit. ...So in certain circumstances relative risk can be very valuable... [U]sing both in... situations... with very small risks.., where... consequences are... severe... [and] the cost of the intervention, the action, is... minimal. Taking a bit more precautions, being a bit more careful... not putting a big investment into making a very small risk even smaller.... not walking under ladders... a low-cost change in your behavior to make a small risk even smaller... [A]bsolute risks really don't deal well with that, because you're talking 0.000...
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About David Spiegelhalter
Sir David John Spiegelhalter (born 16 August 1953) is a British statistician and a Fellow of . From 2007 to 2018 he was in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He is an ISI highly cited researcher and current Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the . In 2020 he joined the UK Statistics Authority board as a non-executive director for a period of three years, which was extended through to 2026.
Also Known As
Birth Name:
David John Spiegelhalter
Alternative Names:
David J Spiegelhalter
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David J. Spiegelhalter
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Sir David John Spiegelhalter
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Additional quotes by David Spiegelhalter
We spent ages... working... for child heart surgery... such a delicate area, trying to find the wording for... random error or binomial variability... [Y]ou can give a percentage... 95% . Well, am I going to be one of the 5% or one of the 95%? We don't know. It's just chance or luck, fortune. We can't... use those words in... delicate situations... operating on children... Then we came up with a good phrase... which we used and tested on parents... It's "unforeseeable factors," not "unforeseen factors," because that would suggest someone's to blame... [T]he unforeseeable factors could lead some people to... not survive the operation, and some to survive. So... we can put you in a group, but we can't go beyond that... [O]nly what develops over time, in terms of complications, or something like that, could... put... you in one group or another. "Unforeseeable factors," I really like that phrase. I try to use it all the time, I recommend it.
In the trials that led to the vaccines... adverse events were reported by 38% of those receiving the real vaccine... 28% of those who received the control [dummy, or fake vaccine, of which some were meningitis vaccine] also reported a side-effect. ...[F]ewer than 1% reported a serious adverse event, and of these... slightly more had received the dummy than the active vaccine. ...So there was no evidence of increased risk ...
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s are disastrous. ...Relative risks are deeply misleading. They're a manipulative form of communication. To ever say, "Oh, this doubles your risk, or increases your risk 50%," absolute No-no! They are hopeless. In some situations they can be very valuable... but in general, medical things what... should be always given... s... with and without something... Like my s... I was getting... 15%, 10 year risk: 15 out 100 people like me might expect to have a heart attack or stroke. So I... roughly halved it... only in terms of relative risk... from 15% to 7-8%. ...Being told it halved it does sound good, but if wasn't a very big number in the first place, halving it is of no interest... especially if the thing's going to give me some side-effects... if it did, it would be completely pointless... [Y]ou cannot know... whether you should do something... [Y]ou cannot trade off the benefits... [and] the harms from a medical treatment without knowing the absolute risk. You cannot do it in any rational way whatsoever. ...A lot of the communication now is using absolute risk, which is a huge improvement.
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