The Deer Hunter: A lesson in the basics of probability and risk assessment

[Trigger warning contains scene with violence] This is an update of a video I posted 4 years ago. The classic 1978 Michael Cimino film “The Deer Hunter” contains one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history involving a ‘game’ of Russian roulette forcibly played by two American soldiers held captive in Vietnam. This scene never seems to lose its impact and it provides a rich source of examples to illustrate (for people with no background in maths or stats) core concepts of probability and risk including: basic probability axioms, conditional probability, event trees, risk and utility.