Article
What are sigma levels?
Find out how scientists, from physicists to geneticists, measure their confidence in their results.
Content about “ risk
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Podcast
What are sigma levels?
What do physicists at CERN mean when they talk about "sigma levels"?
Article
Understanding uncertainty: Visualising probabilities
Probabilities and statistics: they are everywhere, but they are hard to understand and can be counter-intuitive. So what's the best way of communicating them to an audience that doesn't have the time, desire, or background to get stuck into the numbers? This article explores modern visualisation techniques and finds that the right picture really can be worth a thousand words.
Article
Measuring catastrophic risk
Insurance companies offer protection against rare but catastrophic events like hurricanes or earthquakes. But how do they work out the financial risks associated to these disasters? Shane Latchman investigates.
Article
Understanding uncertainty: Small but lethal
Comparing and communicating small lethal risks is a tricky business, yet this is what many of us are faced with in our daily lives. One way of measuring these risks is to use a quantity called the micromort. David Spiegelhalter and Mike Pearson investigate.
News story
What can birds tell us about flying through ash clouds?
Why does a financial mathematician think about birds when trying to understand the grounding of aeroplanes after the Icelandic volcano eruption?