Human Difficulties with Probabilistic Reasoning
(from Stanovich: How to think straight about psychology)

1. Salience of atypical cases ("man-who statistics")
      - Hamil, Wilson & Nesbett (1980) proson guard exp.
2. Insufficient use of probabilistic information
      - Bayes theorem
3. Cognitive illusions
4. Failure to use sample size information
5. Tendency to explain chance events
6. Gambler's Fallacy
7. Conjunction Fallacy

While many scientists sincerely wish to make scientific knowledge accessible to the general public, it is intellectually irresponsible to suggest that a deep understanding of a particular subject can be obtained by the layperson when that understanding is crucially dependent on certain technical information that is only available through formal study. Such is the case with statistics and psychology.


Part of a bigger problem with "innumeracy"

large numbers:
1 million seconds (1,000,000 s) _ 11.5 days
1 billion seconds (1,000,000,000 s) _ 32 years

modern homosapiens, approximately 10 trillion seconds old (10,000,000,000,000 s)