Statistics and Big Data

Everyday risks: when statistics can't predict the future | Science | The Observer: "But – a big but – we're certainly not calculating machines. In fact, if there were such a thing as a risk-calculating machine that claimed to give you objective odds on danger, we'd be the first to warn of malfunctions. That's partly because although we think the numbers matter, they can never be the final word: the stories people tell are big influences on their sense of where danger lies – and why shouldn't they be? – since neither source of evidence, neither numbers nor stories is perfect. Each has strengths and weaknesses.

This is a perhaps surprising conclusion from writers at times almost geeky enough to have two hoods on our anoraks; that we think risk is seldom objective, nor solely a property of the world out there, but intimately bound up with our own perspectives, and so personal perspectives on danger are, usually, perfectly reasonable. "

'via Blog this'