Understanding risk – play it safe or eat a bacon sandwich?

David Spiegelhalter is a Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. He studies the choices we make, and how those choices can have an effect later on.

As he explains in the video below, we have a risky side (the part of you that says it’s okay to eat a pound of bacon every day) and a cautious side (the part that says to eat some oatmeal in place of bacon).

Things get really interesting when you start to look at not the individual choices, but how one choice affects the next. Is knowledge of the outcome enough to make you change your path? How do you find that balance between risky and cautious?

I don’t know much about the subject, but it’s easy to see how it could be really interesting to learn. Now if you’ll excuse me – my bacon is ready.

[via @hadleywickam]

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