In the Fall of 2020, my colleague, Prof. Immaculata De Vivo of the Harvard School of Public Health, and I wrote an essay about the public perception of risk and uncertainty, especially with regard to COVID-19. In this post, we are gathering comments from students in the Spring 2021 edition of "GenEd 1112: The Past and Present of the Future," an undergraduate course I teach at Harvard. Students were asked to read the essay, and then comment here on which part(s) of the discussion they expect would be most illuminating for non-quantitatively-inclined readers --and/or to suggest another framing of the issues discussed that would be more effective.
I think the inclusion of the Deer Hunter and Russian Roulette analogies throughout the article prove to be helpful to non-quantitatively inclined readers. As is addressed early in the article, misunderstanding or confusing the words "risk" and "uncertainty" can be dangerous, and doing so is a key reason why many misunderstand COVID-19. I think the first paragraph of the article does a great job of defining these words through the easily-understood analogies of hunting a deer and Russian Roulette. The article addresses all of the variable factors involved in determining the odds of killing a deer in a single shot which perfectly defines uncertainty, and the blunt 1 in 6 chance of dying in Russian Roulette which defines the other extreme, nearly complete certainty. These examples clearly differentiate risk, the chance of death, from uncertainty, how sure we are about the amount of risk, which I think is really helpful for non-quantitatively inclined readers.