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What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

stat.berkeley.edu

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Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#51

Post by pitdicker »

sd9 wrote: post #48
pitdicker wrote: post #46

It may be nice to know the safety factors used for structural engineering of homes, offices and other regular buildings in the EU. The Eurocode defines 3 consequence classes: CC1, CC2 and CC3. CC1 has the lowest consequence and is used for regular homes, light industry and agriculture. The chance of dying as a result of structural failure is low, 0.001. The chance for a CC2 building (apartment buildings, offices, hot…

> The chance for a CC2 building (apartment buildings, offices, hotels etc.) is defined as moderate with 0.03 Does this mean 3% or 0.03%?

If a CC2 building collapses, the expectation is that in only about 3% of the cases this leads to someone dying. I don't know the complete reasoning, but can imagine some factors of why this number is far below 100%: a building is not always in use, there are often warning signs with time to escape, and collapse can be localized (not the whole building).

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#52

Post by mattikl »

An interesting read. I was secretly hoping it would have delved more into the psychology of how we perceive that chance, what kind of biases we have. I feel we have a tendency of saying "it never fails" on probabilities which turn out to be much bigger than one in a million.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#55

Post by defrost »

rjmunro wrote: post #54

> As I tell students, your grandmother is too sensible to be outdoors during a thunderstorm and a disproportional number of deaths are young men. reminds me of https://xkcd.com/795/

Your grandmother very probably doesn't work in a rail gang.

    ELEVEN members of a railway maintenance crew had to be taken to hospital on Saturday after lightning struck train tracks they were working on in WA’s Goldfields-Esperance region.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/railway-maint...

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#56

Post by ttyprintk »

austin-cheney wrote: post #37

I used to tell people I was an order of magnitude more likely to die from a traffic related accident driving to work than from any hostile action during the two years I was in Afghanistan. People seemed challenged by that.

Reminds me of Jared Diamond explaining why he might not have taken a shower:

https://archive.ph/fNeaH

HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145268

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#57

Post by mewpmewp2 »

Recursing wrote: post #50

Reminds me of https://markxu.com/strong-evidence «One time, someone asked me what my name was. I said, “Mark Xu.” Afterward, they probably believed my name was “Mark Xu.” I’m guessing they would have happily accepted a bet at 20:1 odds that my driver’s license would say “Mark Xu” on it. The prior odds that someone’s name is “Mark Xu” are generously 1:1,000,000. Posterior odds of 20:1 implies that the odds ratio of me…

Someone offering that bet though would also alter the odds though. Because why would someone offer such a ridiculous bet after you've told your name, unless they had special information about your name? Although it being a possible YouTube prank channel would make it also possible that you actually have a chance to win for the reactions.

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#58

Post by rbits »

Toutouxc wrote: post #22

> If we guess a President will serve on average about 6 years, then 1 in 6 times 4.0 million = 24 million babies will someday be President. This sentence desperately needs parentheses. Took me five minutes to parse correctly.

I just assumed they had a mini stroke, I didn't realise there was a way for that to make sense

Re: What has a 1 in a million chance? (2010)

#59

Post by epolanski »

austin-cheney wrote: post #37

I used to tell people I was an order of magnitude more likely to die from a traffic related accident driving to work than from any hostile action during the two years I was in Afghanistan. People seemed challenged by that.

You weren't joking, and actually it's much more than a magnitude.

The chances of dying in a traffic accident in US are between 0.9 and 1.2%, whereas the mortality rate of US military servicemen in Afghanistan has been below 0.004%.

That's 3 order of magnitudes.

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