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What Are the Odds?

By: Natalie Josef (View Profile)

Odds of injury from using a chain saw: 1 in 4464
Odds of dying on a bicycle: 1 in 4472

Odds of being murdered: 1 in 18,000
Odds of dying in a car accident: 1 in 18,585

Odds of getting arthritis: 1 in 7
Odds you don’t have health insurance: 1 in 7

Odds of dying from heart disease: 1 in 3
Odds of an American woman developing cancer in her lifetime: 1 in 3

Odds that you will die from the collision of an asteroid hitting the earth in the next one hundred years: 1 in 500,000

Odds of a non-felon being murdered with a gun: 1 in 500,000
Odds of being in a plane crash: 1 in 500,000

I think we need to keep things in perspective and ignore the commercials that tell you to start dreaming about the millions you’re going to win in the lottery. Actually, just ignore TV altogether. While they’re busy recalling every vegetable for fear of salmonella, no one is mentioning the fact that you’re more likely to die of appendicitis than salmonella. How many people do you know who’ve died from appendicitis? The moral here? Eat your vegetables and don’t play the lottery.

Funny2.com
AOL Money and Finance
National Safety Council
Psychology Today

First published July 2008

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Comments

You know, you can write these articles without using BS numbers. for example, the US had just under 300, 000, 000 people in 2005 and just over 16 000 murders. That same year over 42 000 people died in car accidents. Yet you have posted better odds of being murdered, when you are nearly three times more likely to die in a car accident. We'll not even get into the president one, since there have been less than 50 in the history of the nation. I don't want to be the person to look up how many citizens there have been in that time...

the odds that all of this is made up 1:1

That comment is actually refuting Fulano, not Ricardo. My mistake.

I'd like to clarify something, since there seems to be a mistake in Ricardo's logic. Let's say there's a lottery where the chance of winning the jackpot is exactly 1 in 1 million. Your assertion that the odds of winning are the same whether you buy 1 ticket for each of 800 lotteries or 800 tickets for 1 lottery is not true. The first case, where you buy 1 each time for 800 tries has a 1 - (999999/1000000)^800 chance of winning, and the second case is (1/1000000) * 800 chance of winning. Those numbers are not the same. Think about it intuitively if you don't feel like calculating the answer. Let's say you buy 1 ticket for each of 1 million consecutive lotteries. The odds of winning are <100% because while the odds are low that you would lose all 1 million times, it still is a possibility. On the other hand, if you buy 1 million unique tickets to one lottery, you are guaranteed victory, as there are only 1 million possible permutations of numbers.

I would like to notify you all that this 'odds' thing has n o t h i n g to do with skill or lifestyle at all. First comparison - dog bite vs becoming a saint - nobody wants to get bitten by dog, but some do want to become a saint. And another - dying from shark attack - odds don't count whether you even go to water or fight with a shark or actually if you would even die on that day, but odds are 1:300 000 000 that you will. And Lena, I guess that 'writing a bestseller' does also count the ones that can't write at all. But on the same time, I guess that dating with a millionaire only counts the ones that date. =) Have an odd day.