Friday, October 24, 2014

Risky business

Wise words from Amanda Taub at Vox --

The only way to find out what happened is to wait for evidence — no matter how desperate we are for answers in the meantime. 

A worthy plea for people to wait and see who might have contracted Ebola from the New York City patient rather than speculate about it?

Er, No, Because in that case she says--

Mayor Bill di Blasio said on Thursday that "our understanding is that very few people were in direct contact with him," which would lessen the likelihood that he could have transmitted the virus to anyone in New York.

The earlier quote is an injunction against assigning probabilities to the Ottawa shooter being an ISIS-radicalized Muslim (as it turns out, he was).

Apparently, some low frequency but high profile events are more worthy of estimates than others.