"Gunner" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:48:18 -0600, Don Foreman
wrote:

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:51:43 -0600, Don Foreman
wrote:

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:51:04 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

Reality is the numbers.

No, reality is in specific individual reality, however improbable the
numbers may declare it to be. The numbers describe the realities
that many others in a wide variety of circumstances have experienced.
Consider the statistician that drowned in a river with a mean depth of
20 inches and standard deviation of 5 inches...

If an event has low probability but would have very high cost, it
has significant cost risk even though it is improbable.


I'll note as a postscript that I do have some comprehension of
statistics and numbers. I took a minor in statistics in grad school.
My graduate-level courses were in the statistics dept of the U of MN.
My professor was head of the dept and author of texts in theory of
statistics. I earned A grades.

I won't presume to lecture, but I must say that faulty decisions can
be and often are made from numbers that are valid in context gathered
and taken but perhaps and even often not so in particular.

Try to explain even elementary theory of statistics, probability or
cost-risk analysis to a politican or a zeolot. It's like traning a
butterfly to march.

Barrage of cites and numbers do seem to be persuasive.

I wonder what the stats are, on the likelihood of having an auto
accident or fire in ones home are.

The trouble with car-accident statistics is that you have to decide if
you're comparing incidents per capita, per car, or per mile driven. Per
capita, your chance of dying in a car accident is about four times higher
than your chance of dying from a gunshot -- except for suicides, which
complicate the numbers.

Regarding house fires, there is a similar problem. But deaths per capita
from house fires run around 1/3 that of intentional, non-suicide gunshots in
the US: that is, about 3,000 deaths per year. Injuries from house fires are
around 17,000/year; I'd have to look up injuries from gunfire to compare
them.

--
Ed Huntress