What do the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have in common? All have given serious consideration to how to communicate uncertainty. In March 1951, the CIA secretly warned US officials that there was a "serious possibility" that the Soviet Union would invade Yugoslavia. Sherman Kent, a CIA intelligence analyst, was dismayed to discover that nobody seemed to agree on what that meant. Whereas some understood there to be a 20% chance that the Soviets would invade, others put the risk as high as 80%.
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