ABSTRACT
A risk expert is not just someone who is educated or skilled at estimating uncertainty, and not even simply someone who is a specialist in the field of the risk situation. Risk expertise requires calibration, an ability to estimate one’s own uncertainty about one’s assessment of the uncertainty attached to the risk situation, and this ability is acquired through receiving feedback on the assessments. Exposure, uncertainty, and negative evaluations are the three main conditions that we identified for the application of the concept. The use of statistical language is doomed to create misunderstanding, confusion, or frustration because not only it is, to many people, esoteric but it also is filled with ambiguities. Using a language in terms of natural frequencies fosters communication because it uses ordinary terms, which makes is more appealing, and it is more transparent, which facilitates understanding.
