Real-World Probability Books: Risks (Individuals)
Blastland, Michael and Spiegelhalter, David.
The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger.
Basic Books, 2014.
See my amazon.com review.
Gigerenzer, Gerd.
Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions.
Viking Penguin, 2014.
See my amazon.com review.
Ropeik, David and Gray, George.
Risk.
A practical guide for deciding what's really safe and what's really
dangerous in the world around you.
Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
A wonderful reference work, and an antidote to the "scare of the week" that the media continually inflict upon us.
Has short sections on each of 48 risks
(e.g. indoor air pollution; pesticides; firearms; X-rays; caffeine; breast implants)
containing data and the relevant scientific knowledge, summarized by
two scales of
"likelihood of being affected"
and
"seriousness of being affected".
Ropeik, David.
How Risky Is It, Really?. Why our fears don't always match the facts.
McGraw-Hill, 2010.
See
my amazon.com review.
Walsh, James.
True Odds. How risk affects your everyday life.
Silver Lake, 1998.
Structured around 16 particular topics, from
concrete concerns of individuals
(violent crime; cell phones and brain cancer; secondhand smoke) to more general topics
(moral hazard of insurance; lotteries are a tax on the stupid). A main focus is on
the interaction between scientific data, media reporting, legislation promoted by
interest groups, and regulation by government agencies. By presenting these case
studies from recent history (1975-1995), the author provides an insightful overview
of the real-world interplay of the scientific, psychological and political aspects
of dealing with risk. This book is implicitly a well-justified polemic in favor of
rational quantatitive risk assessment and against media scares, environmental
extremist lawyers and inflexible "command and control" bureaucracy.
Back to complete book list.