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The Improbability Scale

The Improbability Scale (IS) is proposed as a way of communicating to the general public the improbability (and by implication, the probability) of events predicted as the result of scientific research. Through the use of the Improbability Scale, the public will be able to evaluate more easily the relative risks of predicted events and draw proper conclusions when asked to support governmental and public policy decisions arising from that research.


I. INTRODUCTION
Many aspects of life as a responsible citizen in society involve having an understanding of the probability of one type of event in comparison to others. Yet event probabilities are often expressed using unfamiliar or varied terminology (i.e., negative exponents, such as 10 −4 or 10 −5 , one part in a thousand, etc.) with the result that, for the ordinary person, the comparison of event probabilities and the drawing of valid conclusions are made more difficult.

II. PROPOSED REMEDY
As a remedy for this, I propose the Improbability Scale, or IS, defined as: where p is the probability of the event.
IS takes on the value of 0 for absolutely certain events and proceeds upwards for events with greater and greater improbability. The speech was given to a Laboratory audience at the Applied Physics Laboratory Colloquium [8] of The Johns Hopkins University and was also reported on Space.com by Leonard David to a readership more characteristic of the interested general public. There, Goldin is reported as saying: "We want to take the probability of a major failure of today's space shuttle from one part in 200 to one part in 10,000, and eventually to one part in 1,000,000 with about the same reliability of today's commercial aircraft." No doubt for the experienced Laboratory audience the implications of a risk assessment of "one part in 200" were well understood. For the interested general public with little or no context in which to place that assessment, the same is not clear.
However, with context provided by the Improbability Scale and a knowledge of the IS for familiar events, such as that for certainty equaling 0 and that for tomorrow being one's birthday equaling 2.6, the public would have almost certainly understood the implications of a risk assessment that stated: "On the Improbability Scale, a major failure of today's Space Shuttle has a rank of 2.3." Another example of the utility of the Improbability Scale relates to the IS for several independent events occuring together. The IS for the combined occurrence is the sum of 3 the IS values for the individual events. This simple combination rule makes it easy for the general public to use its knowledge of the IS values for familiar events to understand the improbability of a new or less familiar event.
Knowing that the IS for one's birthday occuring tomorrow within a given year is 2.6 and that the IS for being struck by lightning within a given year is 5.4, one has an immediate understanding of just how improbable an IS 8.0 event is-namely, it is as improbable as getting struck by lightning on one's birthday. One can then apply that understanding to even mundane matters, such as when one learns that winning the Powerball Lottery jackpot on the next drawing [6] has an IS of 8.1.

IV. CONCLUSION
I suggest that researchers quote the Improbability Scale values when writing for the general public. Widespread adoption of this way of characterizing events will enhance the public's understanding of the predictions of science and help in obtaining the public's support for actions related to those predictions in, for example, such cases as natural disasters and technological failures.