ar-old man who smoked two packs a day for the past 50 years and continues to smoke has a 15% (1 out of 7) risk of getting lung cancer, which is much higher than the chance of lung cancer in a nonsmoker. However, it also means that there will be many people who smoke their entire lives and never get lung cancer. Statistics provides us with the tools to characterize uncertainty, to make decisions under uncertainty, and to make predictions whose uncertainty we can quantify.</p>
<p>One often sees journalists wr