The Norm Chronicles

June 23, 2014
Journalist Blastland (The Tiger That Isn't) and University of Cambridge risk expert Spiegelhalter examine the probabilities involved in surviving a day. Predictably this includes a plethora of statistics, but the stats are leavened by stories featuring Norm, the archetypical average guy, as well as cautious Prudence and the risk-taking Kevlin brothers. Drawing on media and government documents, the authors concoct a few measurements to help assess risk: the MicroMort, "a one-in-a-million chance of something horribly and fatally dramatic happening," and the MicroLife, one millionth of an adult life or approximately half an hour. Amidst the numbers and stories on topics as diverse as infant mortality, travel, extreme sports, and crime, the authors examine just how all of this affects non-theoretical humans. In the crime chapter they warn that "the plural of âanecdote' is not âdata'... and the corollary of âvivid' or âlurid' is not âlikely.'" From the beginning of the book, the authors acknowledge that "numbers may matter less to us than feelings," while they conclude by asserting that "probability intuitively difficult and confusing." The whole is seasoned with a dash of humor to create a work that should satisfy anyone curious about just how and when this mortal coil might be shuffled off.

May 15, 2014
The authors examine risk both mathematically and emotionally, with sympathy for a public confounded by probability and rarely logical in judging odds.Blastland (co-author: The Tiger that Isn't: Seeing Through a World of Numbers, 2007) and Spiegelhalter (Mathematical Sciences/Univ. of Cambridge) emphasize that the notion of risk focuses thinking on a dreaded event at the expense of all the nonevents that happen, and this framing can induce fear, helplessness and recklessness. By way of illustration, they create three prototypes-the risk-averse Prudence, your average, reasonable guy Norm, and the daredevil brothers Kelvin, Kevlin and Kieren-starting chapters with scenarios on how the characters behave in fraught situations. With broad British humor and slang, the authors cover risks from childbirth, violence, accidents, sex, drugs, transportation, crime, surgery and more, including excellent chapters on cancer screenings and how to read unemployment figures. To make the data user friendly, the authors introduce microunits. A "MicroMort" (MM) is the one-in-a-million risk of dying on a single day of a specific cause. In the case of accidents or acts of violence, for example, the daily risk in the U.K. is 1 MM, while in the U.S., it is 1.6 MM. Another unit, a "MicroLife," looks at chronic risk factors by dividing a lifetime into 1 million equal parts. The authors also spend some time on the history of risk analyses, on the notion of chance and on the inadequacy on information: In the end, no matter what probabilities can be derived from population data, no one can predict what will happen to you as an individual.Commendable for its wide compilation of facts and figures-but perhaps even more so for the authors' "deep sense of uncertainties around data, statistics, and evidence."

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June 1, 2014

Journalist Blastland (The Numbers Game) and Spiegelhalter (statistics, Univ. of Cambridge) combine statistics and narrative to provide an absorbing discussion of personal risk. The authors consider a wide range of dangers people face over the course of their lives, including those associated with infant disease, abduction, childbirth, drug addiction, gambling, radiation, crime, surgery, transportation, and asteroid strikes. In the process, they correct misconceptions about the statistics used in current debates, such as the controversy over child vaccination. Blastland and Spiegelhalter consider not just the statistics but also people's reactions to them--their feelings and perceptions, which constantly influence outcomes. To make these concepts less abstract, the authors have invented three characters: Norm (the average one), Prudence (who is cautious), and Kelvin (the risk-taker), each of whom features throughout the book in scenarios that provide both clarity and humor. Norm and company make this work more approachable and comprehensible, as does the MicroMort--a measurement expressing one-in-one-million chance of dying, which the authors use to compare a gamut of risks. VERDICT General readers will appreciate this engaging exploration of statistics and their relevance to daily life.--Talea Anderson, College Place, WA

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