This series focuses on the foundations of risk assessment—what risk scores represent, how they are constructed, and how they should (and should not) be interpreted.
Before getting into tools, applications, or policy decisions, the goal here is to establish a clear understanding of the core concepts that everything else depends on.
An introduction to a basic but often overlooked issue: not all risk scores mean the same thing, even when they appear similar.
What risk scores actually mean—and how to interpret them in practice.
How risk assessment tools are constructed.
Different pathways can lead to the same score.
Accuracy is about how well a tool separates outcomes; not just how often it's "right."
AUC measures how often a tool correctly ranks people; not how well it estimates risk.