Gerd Gigerenzer is director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He is also director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin. He studies how people can make effective decisions given limited time and information. Gigerenzer also explores ways to improve statistical understanding and communication. He has trained U.S. federal judges and physicians in several countries on how to understand risk and uncertainty. Behavioral sciences writer Bruce Bower asked Gigerenzer about statistical illiteracy ...

Rusty water and other unusual sources of toxic risks in home drinking water.

New techniques are beginning to unravel the mysteries of knots, revealing a great mathematical superstructure in the process.

Although new standards poised to take effect in a few years will reduce the lead-leaching risk from drinking water faucets, showerheads and many other water dispensers around will remain unregulated.

Featured blog: Users of brand-new buildings on a major university campus were surprised to discover high concentrations of lead in the water. Faucets were the culprit.

Engineers are homing in on germs and other surprises behind the development of tiny holes in home water pipes.

In the 1980s, an inkling emerged among some scientists that very disparate phenomena might on some deep level be related. The weather, protein folding, computers, evolution, the stock market, the immune system … each shows complex behavior arising from fairly simple interactions among its parts. For the past 20 years, researchers have labored to understand how these and other “complex systems” work. But there’s still no agreement about even the most basic of questions: What is a complex system? The frustration of this enduring question has led one researcher to a ...

We have a well-honed ability for branding the undesirable attributes of “others.” This natural human tendency has evolved and persists for a reason: The definition of an outcast group helps society to delineate its “normal” boundaries. But this inclination can also breed counterproductive stigmas that are rooted in ignorance and that too often translate into staggering individual, social and economic costs. This makes the need to understand and confront these types of stigmas much more than a purely academic goal. Sociologists like Gerhard Falk are quick to distinguish ...