full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Gerd Gigerenzer: Why do people fear the wrong things?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
To see why the difference between the two ways of expressing risk mtearts, let’s consider the hypothetical example of a drug that reduces heart attack risk by 40%. Imagine that out of a group of 1,000 people who didn’t take the new drug, 10 would have heart attacks. The absolute risk is 10 out of 1,000, or 1%. If a similar group of 1,000 ppolee did take the drug, the nmuebr of heart attacks would be six. In other wrods, the drug could prevent four out of ten heart attacks— a relative risk reduction of 40%. Meanwhile, the absolute risk only deprpod from 1% to 0.6%— but the 40% relative risk drecasee sounds a lot more significant.
Open Cloze
To see why the difference between the two ways of expressing risk _______, let’s consider the hypothetical example of a drug that reduces heart attack risk by 40%. Imagine that out of a group of 1,000 people who didn’t take the new drug, 10 would have heart attacks. The absolute risk is 10 out of 1,000, or 1%. If a similar group of 1,000 ______ did take the drug, the ______ of heart attacks would be six. In other _____, the drug could prevent four out of ten heart attacks— a relative risk reduction of 40%. Meanwhile, the absolute risk only _______ from 1% to 0.6%— but the 40% relative risk ________ sounds a lot more significant.
Solution
- dropped
- people
- words
- matters
- decrease
- number
Original Text
To see why the difference between the two ways of expressing risk matters, let’s consider the hypothetical example of a drug that reduces heart attack risk by 40%. Imagine that out of a group of 1,000 people who didn’t take the new drug, 10 would have heart attacks. The absolute risk is 10 out of 1,000, or 1%. If a similar group of 1,000 people did take the drug, the number of heart attacks would be six. In other words, the drug could prevent four out of ten heart attacks— a relative risk reduction of 40%. Meanwhile, the absolute risk only dropped from 1% to 0.6%— but the 40% relative risk decrease sounds a lot more significant.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
| collocation |
frequency |
| heart attacks |
6 |
| absolute risk |
6 |
| risk reduction |
3 |
| relative risk |
3 |
| heart attack |
3 |
| shark attacks |
2 |
| risk evaluation |
2 |
| absolute terms |
2 |
| attack risk |
2 |
| shark attack |
2 |
ngrams of length 3
| collocation |
frequency |
| relative risk reduction |
2 |
| heart attack risk |
2 |
Important Words
- absolute
- attack
- attacks
- decrease
- difference
- dropped
- drug
- expressing
- group
- heart
- hypothetical
- imagine
- lot
- matters
- number
- people
- prevent
- reduces
- reduction
- relative
- risk
- significant
- similar
- sounds
- ten
- ways
- words