Comment by 7thaccount

I read a book that touched on this called "super forecasters". Apparently there was a push to reduce ambiguity in briefings. I can't remember if it was Obama or a different president (may have been as far back as Carter), but they were told something by an intelligence advisor and they asked for what is basically a confidence interval. The advisor went back and found out what they were conveying as a sure thing was basically like 50:50 chance. At some point they then decided to come up with a system to make this clearer.