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Why do people fear the wrong things? - Gerd Gigerenzer

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TEDEd Animation

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A new drug reduces the risk of heart attacks by 40%. Shark attacks are up by a factor of two. Drinking a liter of soda per day doubles your chance of developing cancer. These are all examples of a common way risk is presented in news articles, and can often be misleading. So how can we better evaluate risk? Gerd Gigerenzer explores the difference between relative and absolute risk.

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In the 1970s, the Mexican government had a problem: the capacity of the Viaducto (a highway with two lanes on each side) was too small, but the government did not have the necessary resources. But they had a brilliant idea: to buy paint, and repaint the highway in order to make three lanes out of two. That effort resulted increased the capacity by 50%. Unfortunately, the smaller lanes lead to a substantial increase of deadly traffic accidents. So the government once again bought paint, and repainted the highways, from three to two lanes. That decreased the capacity by 33%. At the end, it was announced that all these efforts had increased the capacity by 17%. Is there anything wrong with this announcement?

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Meet The Creators

  • Director Mateus Moretto
  • Educator Gerd Gigerenzer
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
  • Storyboard Artist Mateus Moretto, Luciano do Amaral
  • Animator Mateus Moretto, Luciano do Amaral
  • Art Director Mateus Moretto
  • Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
  • Editorial Producer Alex Rosenthal
  • Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
  • Script Editor Elizabeth Cox, Eleanor Nelsen
  • Fact-Checker Eden Girma

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