Ellen Peters

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT ELLEN PETERS

Ellen Peters is the Philip H. Knight Chair and Director of the Center for Science Communication Research at the University of Oregon, with joint appointments in the School of Journalism and Communication and Department of Psychology. She is a world-renowned expert in numeracy, affect/emotion, judgment under uncertainty, and risk communication and has published almost 200 papers in top-tier academic journals. She has argued over the years that being “good with numbers” isn’t a single skill. Instead, decision quality depends on numeric ability as well as on how confident people are in their numeric ability and how numbers make them feel. She prioritizes public impact and how to move ideas from the lab into places where decisions are being made. As a result, she works closely with physicians, policymakers, and others on topics like health risks, climate change, and personal finances that are highly numeric, often emotional, and with potential for costly mistakes. She authored the book, Innumeracy in the Wild, a research-oriented synthesis about numeracy and real-world decision making and writes public-oriented pieces such as for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Scientific American.