From the Desk of Keith Hafner 

Risk Analysis

If you read today’s news, you won’t have to look very hard to find a story about somebody who took a huge risk…with disastrous consequences.

‘Why not do this risky thing?’ they think.  ‘The chances are one in a hundred that something bad will happen.’

Here is where they went wrong.  If the chances are small that something will go wrong…AND if the CONSEQUENCES of it going wrong are slight…it might make sense to roll the dice.

However, if the chances are small that something will go wrong…and the consequences of it going wrong are HUGE (or deadly!)…this requires a different type of analysis.

If the chances of something going wrong are one in a hundred…but the results could be deadly…better to treat it as though it were a 50 in 100 chance…instead of a 1 in 100.