All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be
(much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't
learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of
bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it
would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze
(temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international
travel, and much of the world economy.
Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely
low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the
amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to
lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different.
....Scott
________________________________
From: Paul Brandon [[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger.
We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'.
On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote:
Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of
terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in
your courses:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html
Here's the best bit: "the odds of being on given departure which is the subject
of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By
contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in
500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less
likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by
lightning."
Paul Brandon
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
Minnesota State University, Mankato
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
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