How Risk Literate Are You?
Understanding risk and probabilities is critical to making private and public policy decisions in the modern world. Now the Max Planck Institute in Berlin as devised a three minute online Risk Literacy test. The Institute's press release explains:
Tests exist for evaluating personality, intelligence and memory. However, up to now, it was not easily possible to find out how good someone is at making decisions in risky situations…
Traditional tests, which tend to determine general cognitive capacities, like intelligence or attention control, provide little information about a person's risk competency. A high level of intelligence does not necessarily mean that the person is equally skilled in all areas…
It emerged from these tests that highly-educated individuals often also have difficulty interpreting information on risk probabilities. "However, if we want to have educated citizens who make decisions based on information, we need people who understand information about risks," explains [Institute psychologist Edward Cokely]. Seen in this way, risk intelligence is just as important a skill as reading and writing.
Go here to take the test to find out how risk literate you are.