This is the top page for the "Risks and uncertainties" work I have been doing. There is currently an article about the risk of drugs and the associated difficulties with finding the risk, an article on Transport risks and a shorter article on the RoSPA accident database (this could stay internal).
Reliable drug use figures are very difficult to find, and it is more difficult still to estimate accurately the associated risks. Some indication can be provided by drug use surveys combined with mortality figures, but there are many limitations to such data.
This website is about the use of probability and statistics when dealing with uncertainty, where we use 'uncertainty' in a slightly restricted way. We are only concerned about situations in which individuals or society are uncertain about what is true, which means that we only worry about things that can, at least in principle, be eventually found out to be true or not.
The fundamental concepts that underlie any discussion of risk and uncertainty are themselves subjects of numerous academic debates and further research. In fact even the activity of communicating risk and uncertainty itself is, as is science communication generally, an active area of research with no clear expert opinion of how it should best be done - or even if it should be done at all.
The fundamental concepts that underlie any discussion of risk and uncertainty are themselves subjects of numerous academic debates and further research. In fact even the activity of communicating risk and uncertainty itself is, as is science communication generally, an active area of research with no clear expert opinion of how it should best be done - or even if it should be done at all.