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That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

nytimes.com

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Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#61

Post by mauvehaus »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #45
mauvehaus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to suggest otherwise about the teaching of safety if that's how you read my comment. I think the model you're teaching to the 10-year-olds is both well suited to the audience, and gives them a tool to use to analyze other situations they find themselves in. Sorry if I got derailed a bit from that point while fleshing out the safety system involved in climbing and the risks therein for the non-climbers.…

No offence taken; it was instructive to see the whole analysis. I may take that to a meeting and read it to the Troop if you don't mind?

You're certainly welcome to, so long as you don't scare them off climbing ;-)

I should also note that I am in no way professionally qualified to talk about safety in climbing, or risk analysis in general. I just like to climb, and prefer to do so safely.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#62

Post by protomyth »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #53
protomyth wrote: post #34

The CDC has keeps statistics on how people in the USA die http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm Looking at the 2011 prelims "Accidents (unintentional injuries)" comes in at #5 with 122,777 deaths and Intentional self-harm (suicide) is at #10 with 38,285. Assault (homicide) is no longer in the top 15. Also, Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms is 11,101 with all other Assault (homicide) totaling 4,852. To gi…

> Looking at the stats and what kills us, we spend a lot of time looking at the stuff that is actually going down versus the stuff that is increasing. We need to be careful: maybe things that are going down are going down because of how much time we have spent looking at them.

Possible in some things. They do make a special not on HIV in the paper that should not be ignored.

On guns, we have more than we had before, so the liberalization (old school meaning) of gun laws has not increased any gun related violence. On the other hand, we spend a lot on educating the public on proper eating. I get the feeling our approach isn't correct given the changes, but I would have to look up some study data.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#63

Post by redwood »

tomjen3 wrote: post #32

Solution: a bathtub. I have some combination bathtub + shower so I sit down and wash myself -- it doesn't take longer and I can fall (since I am already at floor height.

I visited a friend in Slovenia and discovered this is the normal routine in Central Europe. In fact they have comfortable tubs which have a higher section for sitting on.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#64

Post by gojomo »

kjackson2012 wrote: post #55
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #5

A handy technique for evaluating situations is this: how many mistakes am I away from death/injury? If I drive without a seatbelt, I've put myself 1 accident away in many cases. My Scouts are young, and love to climb things. I tell them, I know you're strong and skilled. But a loose rock or slippery foothold puts you at risk anyway. So wear the harness - now it takes two mistakes to kill you (e.g. loose rock + badly…

Sometimes you hear things that instantly change your views on the world. I have to say that this above post, in about 10 seconds of reading it, has completely changed my views on assessing risk. The idea of quantifying risk by counting the number of mistakes you are away from catastrophic failure is an excellent way to visualize risk. It's a simple way to calculate risk, and an even easier way to teach my kids. Thank…

There's a similarly great passage in 'The Great Gatsby':

It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a button on one man's coat.

"You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."

"I am careful."

"No, you're not."

"Well, other people are," she said lightly.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident."

"Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you."

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#65

Post by protomyth »

roc wrote: post #54
protomyth wrote: post #34

The CDC has keeps statistics on how people in the USA die http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm Looking at the 2011 prelims "Accidents (unintentional injuries)" comes in at #5 with 122,777 deaths and Intentional self-harm (suicide) is at #10 with 38,285. Assault (homicide) is no longer in the top 15. Also, Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms is 11,101 with all other Assault (homicide) totaling 4,852. To gi…

It's important to remember that causes of death are often also activities which carry utility and even outright life- saving capability. Accidental poisoning, for example, is often due to exposure to cleaning chemicals and drugs which have massively reduced illnesses and deaths. Spending more to make them less accessible may actually be self-defeating, in that it could well cause more deaths than it prevents, by maki…

Simply look at one line of data on anything isn't enough, but it isn't a bad place to start looking at what our actual risks are to see what the numbers on that risk are. Using that as a guide for the first things you should be concerned with helps quite a lot.

Looking at the auto stats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... I am not sure I would say massive.

But today, we are surrounded by "incident news" without looking at the trend lines. "Incident news" does not look at daily problems as its just noise and not headline friendly. It doesn't have a story narrative.

Risk vs reward is always going to matter. We watch TV and see "gun control" as the story. The long term trend lines for guns are more now than ever, more concealed carry, and less deaths.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#66

Post by phil »

mauvehaus wrote: post #21
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #5

A handy technique for evaluating situations is this: how many mistakes am I away from death/injury? If I drive without a seatbelt, I've put myself 1 accident away in many cases. My Scouts are young, and love to climb things. I tell them, I know you're strong and skilled. But a loose rock or slippery foothold puts you at risk anyway. So wear the harness - now it takes two mistakes to kill you (e.g. loose rock + badly…

In the climbing example as presented, you should be at least three mistakes away from injury. The belayer should check the climber's harness and knots before allowing the climber to climb. Naturally the climber should check that the belayer's harness is fastened securely and that the belay device is rigged properly before climbing too. Realistically, there are still several single points of failure in the system: 1)…

I'm pretty sure it's climber error and mis-rigging by at least 10x.

Gear failures of all kinds are extremely rare.

Edit: objective hazard is significant, too: rockfall, afternoon thunderstorms, etc.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#67

Post by stcredzero »

The takeaway for programmers: every time you write a statement, the odds that you're introducing a bug are quite small, but you do this a lot, so the odds guarantee you will introduce a bug. The guys at NASA who came to TX/RX in Houston used to treat soldering defects as a statistical certainty. You empirically determine your solder failure rate, count the solder joins in the project, then look for your predicted number of failures. When they told me this, a light went off in my head. Why don't all programmers do this?

Think of it like this: if someone paid you $100 to take 2 steps balancing on a rail, you're certain to be able to do it. How about going 100 times as far for $10,000 over a 1000 foot drop? As they say: Quantity has a quality all its own.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#68

Post by RyanMcGreal »

protomyth wrote: post #62
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking at the stats and what kills us, we spend a lot of time looking at the stuff that is actually going down versus the stuff that is increasing. We need to be careful: maybe things that are going down are going down because of how much time we have spent looking at them.

Possible in some things. They do make a special not on HIV in the paper that should not be ignored. On guns, we have more than we had before, so the liberalization (old school meaning) of gun laws has not increased any gun related violence. On the other hand, we spend a lot on educating the public on proper eating. I get the feeling our approach isn't correct given the changes, but I would have to look up some study…

I don't deny for a moment that Americans (and indeed, people everywhere) worry about the wrong things. We are biased in a number of ways to pay more attention to risks based more on the availability heuristic than any realistic assessment of what is more likely to happen.

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#69

Post by brudgers »

Mortality Data on Falls from the CDC shows the increase in risk as Americans age - and that is the direction of our demographics:

  Cause of death (based on ICD-10, 2004)        Falls (W00-W19)
  All ages                                      26,009
  Under 1 year                                  10
  1-4 years                                     24
  5-14 years                                    28
  15-24 years                                   211
  25-34 years                                   299
  35-44 years                                   493
  45-54 years                                   1,283
  55-64 years                                   2,011
  65-74 years                                   2,988
  75-84 years                                   7,249
  85 years and over                             11,412    
  Not stated                                    1
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf

Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

#70

Post by phil »

noname123 wrote: post #33

In the derivatives world, there's a saying for trying to bet against highly unlikely events with catastrophic risk for small gains: "picking up nickels in front of a steamroller." The issue is when you pick up enough nickels and watch for the steamrollers vigilantly first few times, you grow complacent and think that you are the master of nickel pickers and steamrollers are slow mofo's. You try to pick more nickels a…

I think LTCM's problem was more that they picked up all the nickels in front of steamrollers.

But it looked like there were some more nickels out in the middle of an 8-lane freeway...

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