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Jan 18, 2016 · A common kind of coincidence, for example, is one in which you think of a friend and that friend calls you. Your first thought might be, “What are the chances?” In the previous post, we bumped...
Dec 16, 2015 · What are the odds of these two events coinciding? The base rate of a specific thought is the number of times that thought occurs divided by the total number of thoughts.
- We Fear Snakes, Not Cars. Risk and emotion are inseparable. Fear feels like anything but a cool and detached computation of the odds. But that's precisely what it is, a lightning-fast risk assessment performed by your reptilian brain, which is ever on the lookout for danger.
- We Fear Spectacular, Unlikely Events. Fear skews risk analysis in predictable ways. Fear hits primitive brain areas to produce reflexive reactions before the situation is even consciously perceived.
- We Fear Cancer But Not Heart Disease. We underestimate threats that creep up on us. Humans are ill-prepared to deal with risks that don't produce immediate negative consequences, like eating a cupcake or smoking cigarettes.
- No Pesticide in My Backyard—Unless I Put it There. We prefer that which (we think) we can control. If we feel we can control an outcome, or if we choose to take a risk voluntarily, it seems less dangerous, says David Ropeik, a risk consultant.
We can use odds to compare different probabilities, by computing what is called an odds ratio – which is exactly what it sounds like. For example, let’s say that we want to know how much the positive test increases the individual’s odds of having cancer.
Feb 23, 2016 · Though “What are the odds?” is pretty much the catchphrase of coincidences, a coincidence is not just something that was unlikely to happen. The overstuffed crate labeled “coincidences” is packed...
The bias from conjunction fallacy is a common reasoning error in which we believe that two events happening in conjunction is more probable than one of those events happening alone. Here’s why this happens and how we can overcome the fallacy. ***. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky spent decades in psychology research to disentangle patterns in ...
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Reading: “10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong,” Maia Szalavitz, Psychology Today “… we overestimate the odds of dreadful but infrequent events and underestimate how risky ordinary events are.
