How to understand risk in 13 clicks

In response to your e-mails after the last column, and the everyday fog of statistics about risks, I've produced what I hope is a better way to see the numbers.

From bacon to booze, risks often make headlines: "CANCER UP X PERCENT IF YOU DO Y" - you know what I'm talking about. So I've devised a simple but different way of seeing stories, with a click-by-click Risk-o-meter. Click through the examples below to see why those percentages easily mislead - and why it pays to ditch percentages and talk instead about the numbers of real people. 

Two caveats. First, links between a food and a health hazard (or benefit) do not always indicate a direct cause. Second, some studies have produced different numbers to the ones here. The benefit of moderate alcohol, for example, is at the conservative end of estimates. Some studies suggest it can be far more beneficial.

We'll bring out the Risk-o-meter if stories like these have drifted into abstract meaninglessness and we'll convert them into something more human.

To be fair, governments and epidemiologists (people who study patterns of illness and their causes) do need to know the percentages - but don't need the media to tell them. The rest of us, who might rely on the news for guidance, deserve something more relevant.

Go Figure hopes from time to time to bring you arresting ways of seeing data. How the numbers look often changes how we understand them. New ideas for data visualisation - like animation in graphs - are causing a buzz among people who use lots of stats, among them the news media. Not everything we offer will be cutting edge, but we hope it will stimulate.

Here's an idea (see image below) called parallel sets, designed to show data with categories that divide into other categories. This one shows passengers on the Titanic, male and female, by class of ticket, and by survival, and is designed by Robert Kosara of the University of North Carolina. Take a moment to explore it and let us know what you think.