Bugs Everywhere

The house i grew up in a… was bugged.
Above the dining room table was a light. Inside the lightbulb was a tiny microphone.
When the light switch was turned on, said microphone would draw power and send a signal through a long cable to a tape recorder hidden away.
The phone also was bugged. All conversations were recorded.
Neither my mum, my brother, or my sister had any idea
I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that counts as a normal childhood…
I am an actuary by profession and therefore would like to give you an example of how things are not as they seem using statistics
Imagine a very rare but dangerous disease — about 1 in a million people get it.
You take a medical test for it, and your result comes back positive.
And suppose I tell you the test is correct 99% of the time… ……. [pause] you’d be pretty worried right. [pause]
theres a bug in your thinking

[long pause]

With only the information I’ve given, i
the maths shows that your chance of actually having the disease is about 1 in 10,000 — even after a positive test.
Why? Because the disease itself is incredibly rare.
It’s far more likely that your positive result is one of the test’s 1% errors than a true case of the disease.
Things are not always as they seem
I’d like to give another example that relates to public speaking
Donald Trump
When Donald Trump campaigned for the 2016 election
He went up on stage and said “In many respects … you know, they honour President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS. Okay? He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS.” “And I would say the co-founder would be Crooked Hillary Clinton.

when i first heard this i thought it was absurd.

in what world had hilary clinton become a islamic fundamentalist and set up a terrorist organisation in the middle east.

to make it even more bizarre the crowd were all cheering.

i could understand they were not fans of clinton and obama

but the fact his statement was such nonsense made the whole spectacle very concerning

when donald trump made his argument he left out a key piece of information. a typical rhetorical device.

i didnt know this but at the time there was a widely held belieft that the Obama administration had been weak in the middle east

this created a “ power vacuum” that allowed an extremist groups like ISIS to grow.

The house i grew up in was bugged
but despite that I had a fairly normal childhood.
My father was a very wealthy businessman and i suppose that aspect is unusual
and like many ruthless business people and went to extremes to get what he wanted
He didn’t wan the divorce my parents were going through to result in losing half of everything he had earned although what happened in morally questionable
you probably thought it all sounded more sinister that it was when i first told you our house was bugged but then again, perhaps that too was a bug in your thinking

Room for Improvement

never flicker eyes… it is weak.
never reach for words.. speak them fluently
needs to be an inclining of solemnity when telling the “house was buggedl” story
slowish speaking allows digestion of your very rich speak
as an actuary…. interpret information [no gap] but i’m also a toastmaster which means i’m also very interest in how information is communicated.
I apologies for dragging him into the conversation but take Donald Trump for example
I whitter…. my speech needs to be more concise