QUERY Incomplete understanding warning (SD6724)

[SDMAIL]

Posted by  <Richard.Dudley at attglobal.net>

The following article may be of interest. It points out the problem of 
limited understanding of interlinked issues (in this case global warming) 
and the difficulty of getting across more subtle ideas as to how things 
really work. I think it is a warning to modelers to be careful to gain a 
complete understanding of the domains that one is modeling.
                                                           

"In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm," from the New York Times, 
January 1, 2008, By JOHN TIERNEY

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html


Excerpt: "When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the 
availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of 
it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of 
dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic 
deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a 
stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available."

Richard
Posted by  <Richard.Dudley at attglobal.net>
posting date  Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:37:09 +0700