The assessment of risk in modern society is one of the most obvious areas where clear statistical thinking can have a positive impact on public misconceptions. With this in mind, Series A of the Society's Journal decided to dedicate its June 2003 issue to the question of how to communicate risk to the public.
This issue of Statistics in Society, featuring D. R. Cox and S. C. Darby as guest editors, carried a collection of short papers on smoking, HIV/AIDS, mobile phones, transport, crime and heart disease. To accompany these papers, the Society also commissioned the science journalist Geoff Watts to write an overview of the problems of risk perception in modern society. This overview became a pamphlet, 'The Trouble with Risk', which was given a press launch in November 2003.
For further information, contact the Society's External Relations office
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