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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/08/probably-more-probably-than-probable.html"> Revolutions</a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
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<p>What kind of probability are people talking about when they say something is &quot;highly likely&quot; or has &quot;almost no chance&quot;? The chart below, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6vythg/i_redid_my_perceptions_of_probability_and_numbers/" target="_blank">created by Reddit user zonination</a>, visualizes the responses of 46 other Reddit users to &quot;What probability would you assign to the phase: <em>phrase</em>>&quot; for various statements of probability. Each set of responses has been converted to a kernel destiny estimate and presented as a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/joyplots.html" target="_blank">joyplot</a> using R. </p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://revolution-computing.typepad.com/.a/6a010534b1db25970b01bb09be7114970d-pi" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Probable" title="Probable" src="http://revolution-computing.typepad.com/.a/6a010534b1db25970b01bb09be7114970d-800wi"></a></p>
<p>Somewhat surprisingly, the results from the Redditors hew quite closely to a similar <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art15.html" target="_blank">study of 23 NATO intelligence officers in 2007</a>. In that study, the officers — who were accustomed to reading intelligence reports with assertions of likelihood — were giving a similar task with the same descriptions of probability. The results, here presented as a dotplot, are quite similar.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/fig18.gif/image.gif" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="CIA" title="CIA" src="http://revolution-computing.typepad.com/.a/6a010534b1db25970b01b7c91b3052970b-800wi"></a></p>
<p>For details on the analysis of the Redditors, including the data and R code behind the joyplot chart, check out the Github repository linked below.</p>
<p>Github (zonination): <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/zonination/perceptions#perceptions-of-probability-and-numbers" target="_blank">Perceptions of Probability and Numbers</a></p>
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