[ExI] probability

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Fri Dec 17 23:43:58 UTC 2021


On Sat, 18 Dec 2021 at 09:55, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Do any of you know what is taught in public schools through high school?
> We all know that the average person is terrible at it and even smart people
> are not much better.
>
> Do you know of the study with breast cancer and a room full of medical
> doctors, showing just how badly they guess the probability?  And then it is
> calculated with Bayes formula?
>

It’s much more basic with many than not being able to use Bayes’ theorem. I
have met people in the last year who are unable to compare two
probabilities. Informed that there is a 1/100 chance of dying from COVID
and 1/million chance of dying from the vaccine, their response has been, “I
still don’t want the vaccine, because what if I’m that 1 in a million?”

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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