Peter Donnelly at TED: It isn’t often that someone can stand before an audience of highly educated, successful people and tell them that they are wrong, most of the time, when they have an opinion on a subject governed by uncertainty. Peter Donnelly, statistics professor at Oxford University, does just that during his TED presentation on statistics of uncertainty.

He uses everyday examples where uncertainty and logic are often at odds with each other. The subject is far to complex for him to elucidate us on how to think correctly about uncertainty and statistics. Instead he uses everyday examples where people have gotten the statistics horribly wrong. Thus the message is: if you are dealing with a decision based on statistical evidence of an uncertain event then you are likely to get it wrong. Therefore before making that decision you should consider that even though it seems logical you are, very likely, making a logical error and should look harder at the problem.

From TED:

Statistician Peter Donnelly explores the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics, and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of criminal trials. Donnelly is a statistics professor at Oxford University who collaborates with biologists, applying statistical models to genetics, with the hope of shedding more light on evolutionary history and the structure of the human genome (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:06)