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

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

#111

Post by blantonl »

TomK32 wrote: post #80
Scarblac wrote: post #19

> "Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten." -- Terry Pratchett Making fun of the fact that if someone says "it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!" in fiction, you know it's going to work. In _Guards! Guards!_ this is taken to the point that…

The cheese-loving aviators have the Swiss-cheese-model to visualize how small unimportant errors can stack up to a catastrophic outcome. Though in my opinion there's a flaw in this thinking as no sane cheese seller would shuffle their layers of cheese after cutting them: Hence 1-in-million chances happen all the time. https://www.aviationfile.com/swiss-cheese-model/

I am a pilot, and in aviation related topics pilots tend to be almost ridiculously pedantic about stuff.

I want to congratulate you on writing the most pedantic thing I've ever read in my life. Truly a masterpiece. I can't wait to bust this out in my next aviation related discussion.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

epolanski wrote: post #59
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.

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by tasuki »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #75

This is very cool, you have to try to pick a random sequence of 1s and 0s and then shows you how not random it is. https://calmcode.io/blog/inverse-turing-test.html

I passed everything up to and including the three digit sequences on my first try. 10 fail, 110 pass. I guess I'm random enough?

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

#114

Post by Snow_Falls »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #77
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would put the odds of Mark Xu’s license having that name on it at about 15%. Because Mark is probably an anglicised asian name.

Not to mention that many Chinese immigrants will give their children European names.

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

#115

Post by Snow_Falls »

sd9 wrote: post #62
pitdicker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Makes sense, so this is confounded by the number of people in the building. 30% for a CC3 seemed high to me initially (hence wondering if 0.3 really meant 0.3%). But since it actually means "in 30% of structural failures in CC3 buildings (e.g. a stadium), at least one person dies", it make much more sense because there are probably lots of people in the stadium.

I agree, it would likely have extremely diminishing returns in terms of lives saved to have more stringent safety requirements. Needs to be a balance after all.

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

#116

Post by Snow_Falls »

nine_k wrote: post #71
GuB-42 wrote: post #38

I think getting killed by a meteorite is in that order of magnitude. But it is a bit of a tricky question. Because you can get hit by a small space rock, it has already happened but it is extremely rare, much less than 1 in a million, and I don't know if there is a record of anyone dying from it. But there is also a small chance of a massive impact killing billions in our lifetime, and intermediate scale events like…

There are records of people killed by meteorites, literally in single digits. A simple statistical test would give you an idea. With 10B people on Earth, a "one in a million per lifetime chance" would happen to 10M people during their lifetimes. If we optimistically assume that a lifetime is 100 years, and the chances do not change with age, the event would affect 100k people every year.

Your calculation is wrong, there are a thousand millions to the billion. If there was a 1/1,000,000 chance across 10 billion people, it would be 10,000 people affected.

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

#117

Post by feintruled »

nabla9 wrote: post #44

"Not in a million years"–something that might happen once in a million years for an individual–happens over 8000 times per year for people on earth. Many of them have smartphones with camera to record the event. That's why we have an actual video where quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Had to search for that video, I love things like this. I was not disappointed, so thanks for that. Really tickled me. Doesn't displace my favourite though: https://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/6922546.bull-br...

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

#118

Post by kgwgk »

column wrote: post #103
egeozcan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's a very small step to make babies amounting to 3 times the current population of Switzerland (so assuming roughly a 50/50 female/male divide, everyone needs to make 6 babies on average, in the same year so they will still all be babies when the last one is born? that's probably impossible for the females but we are already way into the science-fiction category) and put them all in a committee. The more…

What do you mean, "that's *probably* impossible" to make 6 babies from the same mother in a single year? Takes about 9 months to output a human, you know?

> Takes about 9 months to output a human, you know?

It can also be done months faster getting multiple humans though.

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

#120

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

epolanski wrote: post #59
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.

1.2% is over the lifetime. Don't know what the 0.0004% figure means, but in the active war phase coalition forces sustained 1-2%/year fatalities rate in Afghanistan https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/36/4/841/670068?login=f....
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