One of the Chance lectures (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance) from about 2
years ago spoke about this. The example I remember had to do with the
safety of airtravel. Specifically the speaker translated the probability
of dying in an airplane accident into "one flight per day for xxx years"
(I think the xxx was in the low thousands).
A few years back there was a tv news special "are we scaring ourselves to
death", or something like that. The interesting part is the post-show
discussion where they translated various risk factors into "days of life
expectency lost." They took some of the issues of the day (pesticides on
apple trees) and compared them to some everyday activities (driving) and
some known health hazzards (smoking, poverty).
This is the flavor that I would be considering.
Michael
On Thu, 25 Jan 2001, Arthur J Kendall wrote:
> We are currently looking at how quantitative risk assessment is used. Doses can be
>in micrograms, morbidity can be in rates per hundred thousand exposed, mortality in
>10 million exposed, and so forth. In this context, we are looking for citations,
>suggestions, URL's, etc. that address the issue of presenting to a LAY audience how
>to grasp the meaning of large and small numbers, e.g., 3E9, 1.4E-9, billions,
>millions, billionths, and millionths. The numerate community can be asked to recall
>how to deal with these numbers, but we will be addressing a lay audience and want to
>give them some help.
>
>
>
*******************************************************************
Michael M. Granaas
Associate Professor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology
University of South Dakota Phone: (605) 677-5295
Vermillion, SD 57069 FAX: (605) 677-6604
*******************************************************************
All views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of the University of South Dakota, or the South
Dakota Board of Regents.
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