We see relative risks is the headlines all the time. "Eating X DOUBLES the risk of Y." But they are often misleading: to understand whether a relative risk is actually worth caring about, you need to know the change in absolute risk.

A change from 0.001% to 0.002% is after all, a doubling of risk, but so is a change from 5% to 10%. The first one hardly matters, the second really does!

David explains the difference between the two with some real life examples and provides some best practice tips to communicate absolute risks.

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David Spiegelhalter is a statistician, author and broadcaster. His book THE ART OF STATISTICS is a worldwide bestseller. He was the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge for many years, and served a term as the President of the Royal Statistical Society.

Links

RealRisk: a tool for science communicators https://realrisk.wintoncentre.uk
The Winton Centre's website: https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk
Risky Talk the podcast with David Spiegelhalter: https://riskytalk.libsyn.com/