Irrational fears & statistics

I like the fuel consumption one.

The only time I pay anywhere near $4.50 for a coffee is in motorway services & airport departure lounges, when there's little alternative. (It's about £2 for a "regular Americano" at Heathrow (a Costa franchise, I think)).

Thinking about it - I've never actually even been into a Starbucks place.

Hi Milo,

We're not wired for Math.

I would rather say that we are prone to let feelings sway logical thought processes. I have heard it said that feelings are not wrong, they just are. However, what you feel will not necessarily lead you to the correct/best conclusion/decision/action.

I think a good analogy is an optical illusion; what you see (feel) may seem like reality, but is actually not. That it is wrong is not discovered until it is dissected and analyzed (or the person who made it in the first place reveals the secret).

Oh, and I would pay that much for a coffee only if I was extremely tired and needed to keep going, and only if I were in an airport!

Mike

GA. It seems to me that one of the main differences between grown-ups and children is that adults are aware of their feelings but try to act based on knowledge of the situation, while children simply act out their emotions. Maybe there just aren't a lot of grown-ups. Many people in the developed world don't have much experience with crisis and horror, and are likely to over-react to mundane events as if they were facing the end of their world.

Maybe we are just hard-wired by our evolutionary past to be adrenalin junkies, and if nothing really scary happens for a long time, we just dream something up to get a fix.

I wouldn't really blame the news media. They are just doing their job, which is to keep as many eyes and ears as possible glued to the tube. Fear and emotion are much more compelling to most people than a reasoned discussion of public policy options.

Uncertainty leads to fear, fear leads to anger, and anger leads to stupid...

GA JB!

I couldn't agree more!

Dittoes from Milo!

Ok, I'll bite. How is it a better move to put new tires on the Suburbans? Everything is relative to something and apparently I overlooked the obvious? Yes, it is a trick question. More than twice as good? Please explain.

Assuming there are 200,000 cars in the world 100,000 are suburbans and 100000 are Priuses.Assume that all drive 10,000 miles per year.

At 10 mpg before improvements, the suburbans will need 100,000,000 gallons of gas to drive 10,000 miles each.

The Priuses at 50 mpg will only need 20,000,000 to drive the equivalent miles.

After the improvement the suburbans at 13mpg will only need 76,923,077 gallons to drive the same 10,000 miles, the gallons saved are 100,000,000 minus that number or 23,076,923. The Priuses doubled their mpg so that cuts their gas usage in half. Half of 20,000,000gallons is 10,000,000 gallons.

23,076,923 is over 2 times the 10,000,000 saved by the Priuses.

Buy tire stock.

Like I said, math doesn't come easy when what we think we know comes into play.

Great question.

Milo

There is another answer! Melt down the suburbans and turn them into Priuses.

Remember, the goal was to save gasoline. Obviously, buying new tires is less expensive than remanufacturing gas hogs into hybrid technology. I frequently go out of my way to try to avoid thinking like an accountant who can only imagine a 2 year ROI. The problem is that kind thinking should be reserved to conditions that are likely to change by the end of the 2 year period. The change would have to be something like all vehicles would be abandon 24 months down the road.

I also have doubts about being able to maintain 13 MPG consistantly over 10,000 miles but I don't want to spoil the spoof.

yes and it doesn't help that the British media are experts in misrepresenting the truth, skewing risk and spreading fear doubt and uncertainty. Why did the media jump so quickly to that conclusion?

It was the same with the MMR scare, the legacy is another myth that won't die. My son has been diagnosed with ASD and it didn't do me any good having a bunch of insensitive morons telling me it was the vaccine; how does someone with no medical qualifications and a humanities background come to feel qualified to conclude this? And when have you ever heard such a person admit they were wrong afterwards?

Why do the media never wait for any result but speculate endlessly on what might happen?

Luckily I discovered Ben Goldacre and his Bad Science blog. http://www.badscience.net/

and to put the tabloid health scaremongering into perspective http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx

Regarding risk awareness, thousands of people die on the roads with barely a comment yet one train crash with a small number swamps the news for weeks - which transport is riskier?

This doesn't help either:

In a statement posted on the school's website, headteacher Dr Julie Roberts said during the immunisation, "one of the girls suffered a rare, but extreme reaction to the vaccine".

The above is from the first news report I read.

Not sure who's more to blame here - Dr. Roberts for opening her mouth & jamming both feet in it, or the BBC for reporting it. I guess, the Beeb, who should know better.

Think in my case it was the timing thing (on the day I was due to hand in the consent form), and the fatality. I didn't have the slightest qualm about sitting her on my knee many years ago while she had the MMR jab, never having heard any creditable reports of severe reactions to that vaccination (but I did feel for her - I'm not overkeen on having sharp things stuck into my arm/leg/glut max or anywhere else either!)

Meant to add: Ben Goldacre's a good bloke - had a bit of e-mail exchange with him when he did the regular Thursday bit in the Grauniad. Haven't been to badscience.net yet - thanks for the link.

Hi APD,

yes and it doesn't help that the British media are experts in misrepresenting the truth

Hey, it's not just British media. I could almost say that US media is even better at it.

I hope you can find the best path of treatment for your son.

Best Regards,

Mike

We work on an emotional level...
Just look how rich the casinos are and how many people do the lottery.
Many things are to some extent intuitive, especially to us engineers..
Two things which I find are NOT intuitive...stats and aerodynamics.
Remember the goats and car behind the 3 doors thread?... it ran longer than the ba... nah...nothing runs as long as that damn bath thread.
Del

Good words.

"Gather all the information you can, listen to your gut, listen to your heart and talk to your child about it honestly and in depth. Then do what is right for you"

Did all that - hope it was right for her.

Deep words, have a daughter of my own so it is really thought provoking.

Certainly get my vote for "good head on your shoulders"

"(I have yet to see a study done on women who had the vaccine 40+ years ago),"

Me either, but that's because I was already too old for the vaccination by the time it became available and I'm only 34.

Otherwise I'd have been first in line as cancer seems to run in my family. Watch enough people slowly waste away and you tend to have a slightly different outlook on sudden unexpected death.

Me either, but that's because I was already too old for the vaccination by the time it became available and I'm only 34.

That is precisely my point, the vaccine has not been around long enough to qualify as having been thoroughly tested. Since there is no definitive answer as to what the effect of vaccination will be 20 years from now, everyone must make their own choice based on their knowledge and experience. For you, your past experiences lead you to the conclusion that the unknown risks are far outweighed by the known, so your choice is obvious, but emotionally driven... that doesn't mean it's wrong, just that you are factoring different criteria than I, and until there is empirical data to fill in the blanks everyone must use their own best judgement, which should be tempered by the knowledge that they may be trading one demon for another as they tread blindly through the dark.

What if, for example, all the girls being vaccinated have no side effects, ever, but their children are born sterile? Is that better than the relatively small group that would be terminally affected by cancer? Remember, we are talking potentially about half of our population being affected. If you sterilize the children of all the women born after 2009 the human race will become extinct before the start of the next century. I don't believe this is likely, but they don't know it isn't probable either.

I don't know the answer, my point is that no one does and we all need to be aware that though their language is overflowing with words of surety and confidence meant to lull the public into thinking they do have all the answers, the doctor's and pharma companies that are making money selling the vaccine don't really know any better than we do because they haven't had enough time to do the necessary research.

Vaccines have been around for about 200 years now. Can you give an example of any which have shown the kind of long-term negative effects you're suggesting?

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence."

So you're talking belief? What about probability?

I am talking about probabilties... specifically about our lack of knowledge regarding the variables that impact those probabilities. If X=3v/P where P= the test population and v = a number between 0 and infinity what is X please? You can't give me a straight answer because the unknown is just that. unknown. We don't know. We don't even have a range of values so we can approximate. We are asked to believe that men of science have never blown smoke up our collective a$$es and couldn't have been mistaken in this instance because they used probability to tell us so in spite of the fact that we KNOW they haven't done the research. Yes, past experience has told us that the probability of unacceptable side effects is extremely low, but that's math, not reality and low is not synonymous with non-existent; never has been... no matter how extreme. What's worse is that it is math based on PROBABILITIES and not LAWS and while math is a handy tool to describe things that happen in reality it is not a flawless predictor of future outcomes, if it were none of us would worry about cancer, math would tell us whether or not we're gonna be the one to get it and we would know the facts about our actual risks, not the probabilities.

All I'm trying to say is that there is insufficient empirical evidence. I'm not trying to say that vaccination is evil, it may well be the greatest advance our species has ever achieved, probably not, but for a great many women it will certainly have some sort of significant impact; let's pray it is the overwhelmingly positive outcome we expect. We don't know, and anyone who is going to take their child in to get vaccinated needs to involve their child in the decision because it is going to affect the CHILD'S life, not the PARENT'S.

All that said, I do consider myself a man of science and technology... way out on the fringe, but still in there. I believe that science and technology will save humanity and propel us throughout the universe, if we manage to remember how much we don't really know in the process of getting there..

Riddle me this... read my original post. Not just the words you didn't like but ALL of what I said.

I think you make an excellent point in your previous post. Are the unknown consequence of the cure worse than the disease? Watch the movie 'I Am Legend' for an example. Like your example, perhaps it's an extreme, but should be a reminder to not to mandate or mislead the public about a potential treatment (making it sound better and/or safer than it has been proven to be) that's not been thoroughly tested (long term as well as short).

I have similar concerns regarding H1N1 vaccinations.

Taken from http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/the-great-swine-flu-boondoggle/ In 1976 fear of a swine flu epidemic prompted congress to grant immunity to drug companies regarding development of a vaccine. By Oct 11 '76 40 million people were vaccinated. Soon after receiving their shots 3 senior citizen died. In the ensuing days more seniors died and many otherwise healthy people began suffering debilitating neuromuscular problems and paralysis which later was diagnosed as Guillan-Barré syndrome. The Swine flu immunization was the common factor in the cases. Drug companies that manufactured the vaccines made millions yet suffered no liability for the consequences of their untested vaccine. It turned out in 1976 that the cure was more deadly than the disease.

40 million were vaccinated and how many died?

I was asking myself the same question when I read the article. From the article alone, I took it as one soldier from Ft. Dix died (January '76) initially starting the fear of an epidemic. Then in Aug of '76 two members of the American Legion died from respiratory illness after attending the Legion's conference in Philadelphia. While after the vaccination 3 seniors died initially and more died later bringing the death related to the vaccination to more than 3 thus more than the initial supposed epidemic.

I'm looking around on the net to fact check the article as it's a little vague on those details.

I did. You didn't answer the question. Sometimes kids tell parents what they think the parent wants to hear and they lack the information necessary to make an informed decision.

I'm not saying your decision is wrong. I'm just recommending you think further ahead than what scares you now.

Strangely enough, that is exactly what I'm saying.

Surely the any decision is dictated by the statistical risk (as perceived) and the potential consequences. Hence no one would play the lottery if on a 1:10M chance if the prize was a mere 100(€,$,£). By the same reasoning taking an action with possible fatal consequences requires that the odds are very long in the favour of that not happening.

As always though the key word is "perceived". The odds and the consequences we perceive are usually from some publicity generated as a function of profit, either from the pharmaceutical company or the news media looking for a scary story to sell their paper or improve their ratings.

Regards, Chas

I read and read and read again and I still don't understand "But it didn't half make me think."

Only one-quarter thought? Less than that? What means that?

It's an english¹ idiom, meaning "It made me think a lot".

¹ or maybe just English - I don't know

idiom is good, but I like colloquialism better... because it has more letters and ends in 'ism'