True Odds

by James Walsh

Book Overview

Uses sixteen key issues to illustrate how risk is measured and managed and explores how perceptions of risk are formed and manipulated. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563431149
• ISBN13: 9781563431142
• Release Date: February 2015
• Publisher: Silver Lake Publishing
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

In praise of rationality

Aims to discuss risks in everyday life at a level "between dense technical volumes and daffy oversimplifications". Structured around 16 particular topics, from concrete concerns of individuals (violent crime; cell phones and brain cancer; secondhand smoke) to more general topics (moral hazard of insurance; lotteries are a tax on the stupid). A main focus is on the interaction between scientific data, media reporting, legislation promoted by interest groups, and regulation by government agencies. By presenting these case studies from recent history (1975-1995), the author provides an insightful overview of the real-world interplay of the scientific, psychological and political aspects of dealing with risk. This book is implicitly a well-justified polemic in favor of rational quantatitive risk assessment and against the media scares, extremist environmental lawyers and inflexible "command and control" bureaucracy that waste billions of dollars whose diversion from more rational use causes unnecessary death and suffering. Though serious, well researched and an engaging read, I do have some quibbles. The lack of explicit citations makes it unhelpful as scholarship. By mixing several styles (historical case studies, discussion of scientific methodology, polemic) the book appears somewhat unfocused. And the unusual typography (a typical page has seven two-sentence paragraphs separated by white space) reinforces the impression that the author was assiduous in collecting information but put less effort into organizing a coherent narrative. Finally, the subtitle is misleading: a reader seeking a straightforward, detailed and explicit analysis of risks in everyday life would be better served by Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You.

Practical look at the real odds that threaten people's lives

Enhanced with an extended bibliography and an exhaustive index, True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life by James Walsh is a very straightforward and practical look of the real odds that threaten people's lives or health. Rejecting anecdotal evidence and media scare tactics for solid, statistical, reliable information on what really are the greatest threats facing life in the modern world, True Odds comes very highly recommended for the non-specialist general reader as being a realistic source of information concerning everything from crime and accident rates to having sufficient money saved upon retirement.