Odds
April 7th, 2007 | 
Author: 
In preparing for an upcoming post, I’d like to ask my readers something. Do a little poll.
Suppose you have never flown before, you don’t know anything about it.
But now you are about to take a commercial flight in the US: you want to go to Vegas for a poker tournament or your company sends you on a mission to put out a fire somewhere or you’re going to attend a highschool reunion .. whatever.
Since you have never flown before, you do some research. Now SUPPOSE that you find these statistics (they are not realisitic, but, for this exercise, pretend you don’t know anything about flying and ASSUME that these numbers are correct):
The odds of a commercial flight (within the US) crashing and killing all its passengers is 1 in 3000.
The number of commercial flights on any given day is 30,000 (this is fairly accurate).
This means, that when you board your plane, THAT DAY, 10 commercial flights WILL crash in the US.
ASSUMING that these numbers are correct, will you make different travel arrangements (not involving planes)?
Or would you think, oh well, a 0.03% chance of crashing is negligible, let’s go …
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$cat_ID is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 378
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_count is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 379
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_description is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 380
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$cat_name is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 381
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_nicename is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 382
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_parent is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 383
Posted in Emotions
Deprecated: ltrim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 3030
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Query::$comments_by_type is deprecated in /homepages/29/d116676307/htdocs/claessen.com/blog/wp-includes/comment-template.php on line 1528
I’ve travelled hundreds of thousands of miles in airplanes. I didn’t care for it much on a good day. On a day when I have a .03% chance of not surviving? I might go – but I would buy some good flight insurance first.
Probably though, I wouldn’t go.
So what’s the “real deal” you want to post about? The odds of someone getting an STD are a LOT higher than that – the odds of dying in a car crash on the way to church are very much lower than that (well, actually, in my case, those odds are zero). Anyway? What is it? Spill.
Rob
@Paul – feel free to correct my typos 😉
I would take a walk.
(Ik zou een loopje nemen.)
@kr8tr .. patience, my man. And no, it’s not related to any of the ‘risks’ you mentioned.
I’d check up on the plane models, and check on the statistics of that particular plane model crashing. That would be a lot more accurate, wouldn’t it? =)
@Nicole .. it probably would. But this post isn’t really about the safety of flight. It’s more about odds perception… more on it later.
I don’t look at the absolute % chance figure; I just look at the overall “transport” statistics and conclude that both air and train travel are much much safer (per mile, or per trip taken) than going by car, and certainly by motorcycle – which I use nearly every day. If I accept the chances of the latter, I surely accept the chances of the former – so I don’t give taking a plane a second thought.
Not sure how these “relative odds” fit in your story of “odds perception”, but I guess we’ll soon find out 🙂
The odds of dying in a car crash are significantly higher that the “odds” Paul quotes here …. by now you must have realized that he borrowed those odds from somewhere ….
Interesting reactions, but I’m afraid I haven’t been quite clear enough about this.
As for Suze’s comment, I have to assume (and this post was ALL about ‘assuming’) that she means that car crashes are WAY more common than airplane crashes. Which is true.
As for Injun’s comment: quite interesting too, but in a puzzling kind of way.
Quite frankly, I don’t quite get it. How is looking at the ‘absolute’ odds different from looking at the “overall statistics”? Injun APPEARS to say “When, according to government rules and norms, it IS safe, then .. I will deem it safe, no matter what the ‘absolute odds’ say”.
I know him better than to ‘go’ with this kind of reasoning .. hence my confusion.
Again, I have to stress, that my odds were NOT realistic! It was just an excercise! IF you are put into a position, voluntarily, where going along with whatever it was you were asked to do, would kill one out of 3,000 people.. would you do it? I chose flying as an example. I could have chosen riding a roller coaster. Let me ask this again: ASSUME (the key word here! DON’T look up real statistics!) that this ride is the direct cause of death of one out of every 3,000 people riding it. EVEN though (for Injun), according to norms and regulations, this ride is deemed ‘safe’ .. would you ride this roller coaster?
(And in the end, it’s not about flying or roller coasters… my post follows after your guys’ answer)
Well I’d just give it a chance then. Just a thought, it becomes a bit misleading when you say 10 flights in the US will crash. You should probably have said 10 flights out of 30 000, makes it a lot clearer.
@Sean .. Thanks for your response. Btw, I’m not quite sure I understand it, though. I DID say a) there are 30,000 flights each day and b) 10 would crash every day. Isn’t that as clear as sying 10 flights out of 30,000 will crash each day?
And about giving it a chance .. wow, that makes you a dare devil in my book! You REALLY would get in a plane tomorrow if you knew that EVERY SINGLE DAY, there WILL be 10 fatal airplane crashes?
I never feel comfortable (secure) on an airplane, while I know the chance of becoming a victim of an airline disaster is relatively low.
So… NO I would not even think of flying with an average of 10 planes a day crashing. Heck, it would be dangerous to even walk outside with that many planes falling out of the sky 😉
Great write up… THe chance of a plane crash is so little there is no point worrying 🙂
@Craig .. you really didn’t read the post, did you?