Probabilities

People like certainty and I am no different but the basic fact is that the world we live in far from certain and dominated by probabilty.People need to come to terms with that. Scientists, politicians and their like need to come to terms with that and explain things more clearly to people.

When I was a kid at school, our teacher talked about half lives of radioactive isotopes. I was confused. I mean if half a gram of cobalt 60 decayed in 60 years, why didn't the other half go in the next sixty years. Got nothing out of the teacher but later I came to understand that no atom has a definite lifetime, it just had a probable lifetime and that's why half of cobalt 60 goes in the first 60 years and half of what is left goes in the next 60 and so on and so on.

So let's go to weather forecasts. They tell you that there is a 60% chance of rain tomorrow afternoon. What they do not realise is that many people do not understand percentages. Many years ago, I did a presentation to my workforce on quality and I was rabbiting away about percentages. A brave lady put her hand up and said she didn't understand percentages. Stopped me in my tracks.

So I took time out to explain them. You see for the public at large, it would be far clearer to say we have 6 chances in 10 of rain tomorrow but we have 4 chances in 10 of no rain. Folks gamble on horse races and understand the odds so why not portray it in those terms.

But we must go further and make people understand that the whole world is uncertain and little more so than in the world of economics or even in their home life.

Ask anyone what time they will serve lunch next Sunday and they will answer with something like around 1pm to 2pm. Point out their uncertainty and imprecision and ask them why they expect the weather forecast to be any better. You will find that they understand if you are patient.