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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $13.50

Format:
Paperback
144 pp.
15 b/w halftones, 111 mm x 174 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199576203

Publication date:
June 2011

Imprint: OUP UK


Risk: A Very Short Introduction

Baruch Fischhoff and Dr. John Kadvany

Series : Very Short Introductions

Risks are everywhere. They come from many sources, including crime, diseases, accidents, terror, climate change, finance, and intimacy. They arise from our own acts and they are imposed on us.

In this Very Short Introduction Fischhoff and Kadvany draw on both the sciences and humanities to show what all risks have in common. Do we care about losing money, health, reputation, or peace of mind? How much do we care about things happening now or in the future? To ourselves or to others? All risks require thinking hard about what matters to us before we make decisions about them based on past experience, scientific knowledge, and future uncertainties.

Using conceptual frameworks such as decision theory and behavioural decision research, we examine the science and practice of creating measures of risk and look at how scientists apply probability by combining historical records, scientific theories, and expert judgement.

Showing what science has learned about how people deal with risks, and applying these to diverse everyday examples, the authors demonstrate how we move from understanding a risk to making a choice in everyday life.

Readership : General readers and students of public policy, management and business, environmental science, engineering, psychology, politics, and philosophy.

1. Risk decisions
2. Defining risks
3. Analyzing risks
4. Risk perceptions
5. Risk communication
6. Reconciling risks
7. Risk, culture and society

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Baruch Fischhoff is Howard Heinz University Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research includes risk perception and communication, risk analysis and management, adolescent decision making, medical informed consent, and environmental protection. He has co-authored or edited four books, Acceptable Risk (1981), A Two-State Solution in the Middle East: Prospects and Possibilities (1993), Preference Elicitation (1999), and Risk Communication: The Mental Models Approach (2001). John Kadvany has worked for over 15 years on risk-related projects as a private consultant and has published academic articles on risk-related topics and the philosophy of science. His clients include the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy. He is the author of the philosophy of science book Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason (2001).

Special Features

  • Includes everyday examples of risk, relating them back to the science involved in predicting risk and making decisions.
  • Helps the reader to understand risk to enable better risk decisions in their own public and private lives by using a variety of everyday examples.
  • Explores the concept of decision theory and behavioural decision research.
  • Part of the bestselling ery Short Introductions series.