historical

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

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.

How long did we live?

We thought it would be interesting to extend our Survival animation backwards in time. With some help by the ONS Centre for Demography we've been able to go back roughly to 1845.

The classical approach

Due to our ignorance about the outcome of, say, a cast die, and because there is no indication for us to think one outcome more likely than any other, we must give them all an equal probability.

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