estimating risks

Filed in archive Global Economy on February 25, 2004

Rob links to a new study about how people (mis-)perceive risks. It's a tricky problem I'm pondering about regularly. It is very difficult to make a good guess about a risk even if you know the probabilities. First the math can be tricky and second there are many factors that actually change your exposure to a certain risk changing the probabilities considerably. I haven't found a good way to guess so far.