Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15255

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Blastland M.
How to understand risk in 13 clicks
BBC News 2009 Mar 11
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7937382.stm

Abstract:

GO FIGURE
Different ways of seeing stats

What are we to make of all those stories that warn of lifestyle dangers and slap a giant “%” sign in the headline? Michael Blastland introduces the Risk-o-meter to his regular column.

In response to your e-mails after the last column, and the everyday fog of statistics about risks, I’ve produced what I hope is a better way to see the numbers.

From bacon to booze, risks often make headlines: “CANCER UP X PERCENT IF YOU DO Y” – you know what I’m talking about. So I’ve devised a simple but different way of seeing stories, with a click-by-click Risk-o-meter. Click through the examples below to see why those percentages easily mislead – and why it pays to ditch percentages and talk instead about the numbers of real people…

Notes:

Internal links not included here. Please visit BBC site for “Risk-o-meter” and innovative method of graphing called parallel sets, designed to show data with categories that divide into other categories.