On 10/2/2015 6:58 PM, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Friday, October 2, 2015 at 7:53:49 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:


(sigh) You truly don't get it, do you? A percentage is a *portion*;
a likelihood. It has nothing to do with a common-ness... a frequency...
which is a "per unit time" measurement.

Oh, I get now. You can use your percentage of 70% to Vote "Yes" on commonness,
but I can't use 9.2% to vote "No".

The percentages pertain to ACTUAL FIRES! You can count the number of ACTUAL
FIRES in any particular time period. From that (events per unit time) you get
FREQUENCY OF OCCURRENCE. Has nothing to do with how LIKELY a home is to
catch fire! I'm looking at a PORTION (percentage) of a FREQUENCY. So,
it's a measure of "common-ness".

That's the only NUMBER you are going to get -- there are no "smoke detector
police" who will check every residence to see *if* they have a detector and
*if* it has batteries and *if* the batteries are operational. *But*, the
cited report indicates the portion of those ACTUAL FIRES that had battery
powered smoke detectors that DID NOT OPERATE (20% of those fires). Of
these ACTUAL FIRES in which BATTERY POWERED DETECTORS failed to operate,
70% of those were the result of missing, disconnected or dead batteries.

Do the math and you can see that this isn't a small number -- IN A GIVEN
PERIOD OF TIME (ha nothing to do with the likelihood of a fire!).
As such, it is COMMON.

Chance of winning the lottery is essentially ZERO -- 0%! Yet, someone ALWAYS
seems to win! So, winning is COMMON -- but not LIKELY!

Does this sound familiar?

You: So, in response to your comment, below:
Me: "Common? Until I see the numbers, I'll vote No."
You: I vote *yes* (70% of the fires!) -- unless you'd care to offer
some OTHER numbers?

Like I said, but neglected to do...moving on.

This is why so many folks are suckers for gaming machines; failing to
understand what the numbers *mean* and reading more (or less!) into them than
the actual math implies!