Is it worth the worry?

I first met Simon Briscoe when, as a young MP enjoying a summer evening by the House of Commons terrace bar, I observed a youth in a Refreshment Department staff uniform pelting a group of Thames ducks with dry roasted peanuts. ‘Could you sink one?’ I asked.

‘Thanks,’ he said: ‘a pint of lager and a packet of crisps if you’d be so kind.’ We fell into conversation. Briscoe had recently landed a coveted position as a graduate trainee at the Treasury, but for light relief was moonlighting as a glass-clearer over the road at the Palace of Westminster. He went on later to an investment bank, and now writes on statistics for the Financial Times. I recall his explaining to me, on buying a 500cc motor bike, that he wished to place himself in a maximum death-risk category and then minimise (by skill) his death-chances within it. He loves numbers, hates the misuse of numbers, and has had a lifelong fascination with the calculation of chance.