Sir David Spiegelhalter: Statistics, Communicating in Crises, and Living with Uncertainty

Hi everybody, I'm Nikola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and today I'm in really good company with Sir David Spiegelhalter. He is, well, I would say he's the world best statistician and for sure the best communicator of risk that I've ever seen. Written lots of fantastic books. and is particularly known for making statistics which is uh difficult uh really accessible for all the people so big thanks for joining us no great great pleasure to be here having worked with risks what what's the main thing that you have learned about human psychology? Well, first of all, that I'm not a psychologist.

So, you know, I am a statistician, but I I have done my best to learn from psychologists that I have worked with. And I suppose just from observing how people react to risk and uncertainty, I tend to think of the broader idea of uncertainty rather than just risk. Everything to do with not knowing about what might happen in the future or even not knowing what's going on at the moment or what's happened in the past. All these things we are uncertain about.

Some of them, you know, usually things do have an upside and a downside, and so they could be considered risks depending on how they occur. But I think, you know, what I've learned is that people, you know, have to live with uncertainty. When you ask people, they say, oh, I don't like uncertainty. And then when you ask but some but some people like it, right? Well, some people like it.

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