Are you ruled by your gut or your head?

Take this experiment to find out

You are in charge of a state park that has a fund of $100,000 set aside to deal with unexpected problems. Two problems have come up: how much of the budget should you spend on each one?

Deer are eating so much they are destroying plant life. Worse, they are a menace on the roads, causing collisions with visitors’ cars that damage the cars and, occasionally, the people inside. On a ten-point scale, the estimated risk posed by deer to human safety is nine, the risk to property ten, and the risk to environmental health is ten.

The other problem is crime – specifically, theft from cars, vandalism that damages property and plant life, and purse snatchings that sometimes cause minor injuries to the victims. In this case, the risk posed to human safety was rated to be three, the risk to property four, and the risk to environmental health four.

How much of the $100,000 would you spend on each problem?