What’s your RQ? (Image: Andrew McConnell/Panos)

Humans are useless at assessing probabilities. But against the odds, Dylan Evans has tracked down the handful of people who rate as geniuses on the intelligence scale he calls risk quotient. Alison George asked him what they can teach us – and if we can boost our own scores

Most people probably haven’t heard of risk intelligence. What is it?

It is the ability to estimate probabilities accurately, it’s about having the right amount of certainty to make educated guesses. That’s the simple definition. But this apparently simple skill turns out to be quite complex. …