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Title: Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You by Gerd Gigerenzer ISBN: 0-7432-5423-6 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 19 March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Calculated Risks by Gigerenzer
Comment: The author presents some important observations about calculated
risks, probabilities and statistical test inferences. He makes
clear the necessity to understand risks clearly at the outset
of any important decision. For instance, a physician must take
into consideration "false positive " test results so that
he/she does not over-react. An over-reaction could cause the
physician to take unnecessary precautions that could do more
to endanger the patient than help. In addition, the author
cautions against fabrication of certainty or the use of
statistics to prove a predetermined result. This book is
useful in arriving at a realistic design for a statistical
test or any other test from which an important scientific
inference will be made.
Rating: 5
Summary: Be an Informed Consumer in the Age of Numbers
Comment: Gerd Gigerenzer has written several books dealing with "bounded rationality"--how humans use their brains to understand the world around them, make decisions, and determine the risks associated with a given course of action. This book is easily his most accessible. It is clear and easy to read, with most(but not all)the examples drawn from the field of personal health.
Gigerenzer provides the simple mental tools that allow anyone to make sense of the statistics that bombard us daily in the media. It is exactly his point that one does not need to be a rocket scientist (or professional statistician) to understand the numbers used by professionals, from personal physicians to DNA experts, that affect our lives and livelihoods.
If I could recommend only one book to address "numerical illiteracy," this would be it. You will learn some essential skills in a clearly informative and entertaining way.
Rating: 5
Summary: EVERYone should read this!
Comment: Heading for a medical exam? Wonder if those uncomfortable, expensive tests really make a difference? Skip the medical libraries and talk to the statisticians.
Gigerenzer bares the truth that doctors conceal because of ignorance or greed. Every woman should read his chapter on the risks and benefits of mammograms. The rate of false positives for mammograms is a whopping ninety percent. The cost is not measured by x-ray charges alone (although a radiologist huffed out of a meeting with a gynecologist who stopped recommending mammograms -- they make big bucks from those tests!). Think of the unnecessary biopsies -- and the unnecessary surgery because biopsies have error rates too.
Cancer tests do not cure or prevent cancer. They may reduce the risk of death, although a comparison between screened and unscreened populations shows that very few lives are actually saved this way. And there is no risk reduction unless early detection affords access to a cure.
AIDS tests also carry risks. The rate of false positives among a healthy, "safe-sex" population is about fifty percent. The author describes horror stories of disease-free people who were mis-diagnosed. They lost jobs, homes and friends; some sued for recovery but at least one committed suicide.
Our health care system spends millions on tests because both patients and doctors are ill-informed. We demand a cure and the medical system finds a way to give us the illusion of progress.
It's not just the US. The author found ignorance of false positives for AIDS tests in Germany. When I lived in Canada, the provincial health system bombarded us with propaganda for mammograms.
Gigerenzer has done the world a great service by writing this book and presenting data in a reader-friendly fashion. I suspect there is a human tendency to look for certainty and today's medical tests seems to be the equivalent of divining rods and astrology of three hundred years ago. Now I wish he'd take a look at academic and career tests, most of which also give a form of "false positives." We'd like a yes or no in this world, but alas, mostly we have to learn to live with the maybes.
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Title: Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart by Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, ABC Research Group ISBN: 0195143817 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.50 |
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Title: Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series) by Gerd Gigerenzer ISBN: 0195153723 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Empire of Chance : How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life by Gerd Gigerenzer, Zeno Swijtink, Theodore Porter, Lorraine Daston, John Beatty, Lorenz Kruger ISBN: 052139838X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 26 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox by Gerd Gigerenzer, Reinhard Selten ISBN: 0262571641 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 07 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You by David Ropeik, George Gray ISBN: 0618143726 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 28 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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