Hein's Thoughts

I wrote the comment below in reaction to http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/comment-page-1/?unapproved=122880&moderation-hash=5c0d5b5fb23b1a617305d09e3638c0c0#comment-122880 Comment: Often there is a large disconnect between what we write and what people understand.  Almost everything I've published has been in mathematics where there is less of a problem because we write proofs.  Usually, if all the details are spelled out, the reader (another mathematician) will be able to read what you wrote and understand 95% of what you are trying to convey.  Other fields, generally speaking, are not like that. On the other hand, when I explain math to students, I sometimes see giant misunderstandings.  Homework problems help a lot to remove misunderstandings.  I recall that it was difficult for students to learn the basics of the orbit of the moon and planets around the sun.  I am thinking that if students needed to calcula...

I wrote this paragraph in response to one statement from the nice post   https://webdeveloper.app/we-dont-know-enough-about-covid-19-thats-exactly-why-you-should-be-careful/ . "Risk analysis only works if you know the full extent of consequences" In one sense, this is obviously true.  If you want to compute the probability of losing a specific amount, then you need to know the probability of each possible outcome. On the other hand, we are human beings with limited knowledge.  It’s impossible to know all of the possible outcomes and the unknown unknowns ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns ).   We still need to make decisions.  There are two possible options that come to mind:   1) Abandon risk analysis and be very conservative. 2) Make your best guesses about the probabilities for risk analysis based on the flawed data that you do have.   Of course there are many possible ways to intelligently plan in the face o...