As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

https://understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

What's more dangerous - the bute or the burger?

Submitted by david on Fri, 15/02/2013 - 8:28am

There is reasonable public outrage at possible criminal conspiracies to adulterate meat products with horsemeat, and additional concerns raised about the presence of the anti-inflammatory known as bute.

Squaring the square, in glass

Submitted by david on Tue, 22/01/2013 - 6:24pm

Here is my latest stained glass effort, seen on a snowy day.

trinity-glass2-small.jpg

It is a 'square of squares', where all the constituent squares are of different sizes. Here are the dimensions -

sqsqbig.png

Alcohol in pregnancy and IQ of children

Submitted by david on Fri, 16/11/2012 - 5:54pm

Some of the coverage of yesterday's story about drinking in pregnancy and IQ of children was not entirely accurate. The Times reported that 'women who drink even a couple of glasses of wine a week during pregnancy are risking a two-point drop in their child's IQ', and 'children whose mothers drank between 1 and 6 units a week - up to three large glasses of wine - had IQs about two points lower '(than mothers who did not drink).

Is it possible to improve your chances of winning big in the National Lottery?

Jonathan ClarkeThis was the question I asked myself several years ago when making the decision to play the nation's favourite flutter on a regular basis. I couldn't improve the chances of my chosen numbers being selected but could I give myself a better chance of not sharing my winnings if my numbers were selected? The numbers which come out of the machine are random, but the numbers which people choose are not random (unless selected using the Lucky Dip option).

More lessons from L'Aquila

Submitted by david on Sun, 28/10/2012 - 7:18pm

The L’Aquila story gets even murkier.

The Continuing Tragedy of L’Aquila

Submitted by david on Wed, 24/10/2012 - 7:42am

As in ‘Boffins jailed for not predicting earthquake’, the 6-year sentences and massive fines handed out to the Italian seismologists have been largely portrayed by the media and commentators outside Italy as an attack on science, and the prosecution ridiculed as expecting the scientists to have been able to predict the earthquake.

Rats and GM

Submitted by david on Thu, 20/09/2012 - 6:55am

With others, I made some comments for the press about the recent paper (abstract, figures and tables freely available here) on cancer in rats fed GM maize and Monsanto's Roundup pesticide.
[ Full paper should also be available here].

Explaining 5-sigma for the Higgs: how well did they do?

Submitted by david on Sun, 08/07/2012 - 1:17pm

Warning, this is for statistical pedants only.

Higgs: is it one-sided or two-sided?

Submitted by david on Tue, 03/07/2012 - 6:08pm

Announcements about the Higgs Boson are invariably framed in terms of the number of sigmas, with 5-sigmas needed for a ‘discovery’. Media outlets helpfully explain what this means by translating 5-sigmas to a probability, which is almost invariably misreported as a probability of the hypothesis that it is all just statistical error e.g.

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