In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen Sir David Spiegelhalter: Statistics, Communicating in Crises, and Living with Uncertainty
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Sep 3, 2025 
David Spiegelhalter, a renowned statistician and expert in communicating risk, shares insights on navigating uncertainty. He discusses why we fear the unknown and how statistics can empower us to make sense of complex situations like COVID-19 and climate change. The conversation highlights the need for trust through transparency about uncertainty and the importance of adapting our understanding of statistics in public discourse. Spiegelhalter also touches on AI's role in health diagnostics and emphasizes resilient decision-making in a data-driven world.
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We Live With A Cloud Of Unknowing
- People must live with deep uncertainty that cannot be fully listed or controlled.
- Spiegelhalter calls this the "cloud of unknowing" and emphasizes strategies to cope with it.
Rational Models Aren't Enough
- Purely "rational" decision theory fails because you can't list all outcomes or assign precise values.
- Use imagination, diversity of views, analytics, and judgment together when facing uncertainty.
Numbers Carry Judgments
- Numbers are not "cold, hard facts"; data collection and analysis contain many judgments.
- Making these judgments explicit helps readers assess and challenge conclusions.
