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Anyone else find the standard "probability yardstick" very misleading on the "unlikely" side? I know the whole point of the article is that English speakers can
by nickm12 1y ago
Anyone else find the standard "probability yardstick" very misleading on the "unlikely" side? I know the whole point of the article is that English speakers can interpret these phrases differently, but calling a 1-in-3 chance "unlikely" seems off. I would shift that whole side down—30% as "a possibility", 10% as "unlikely", 5% as "highly unlikely".
- irjustin 1y agoYou're right, whatever they pick will be wrong, but that's "missing the forest for the tree" The goal is to remove uncertainty in the language when documenting/discussing situations for the state. It doesn't matter that it's wrong colloquially or "feels wrong". It's that when you're reading or talking about a subject with the government, you need to use a specific definition (and thusly change your mental model because everyone is doing as such) so that no one gets misunderstood. Would it be better to always use raw numbers? Honestly I don't know.
- rendaw 1y agoOr new words unrelated to vernacular? Like "This is a cat-3 risk". When repurposing words in common usage they're always going to be fighting against intuition and triggering confusion because of it.
- fc417fc802 1y agoI was thinking this while reading it as well. Why go to all this trouble when we know in advance there will still be issues? Standardize on not using casual wording for quantified risks and instead provide the actual numbers. Something like "40 (out of 100) error 10 (plus or minus)". No more ambiguity. My offhand example even abbreviates nicely as scientific notation ie 40e10. I'm sure someone who actually spent some time on this could come up with something better.