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Re: Can we quantify road bike risk? [nbaffaro]
nbaffaro wrote:
Is there a difference in risk and odds?

Say I have a 1/400 risk of being bitten by a snark every time I swim in the ocean. It only makes sense that my risk on a particular day are only 1/400. But if I never get in the water my odds are zero. But, if I go every day my odds will go up. However, the risk is always the same?

Just trying to understand.


How did your odds go up if you go every single day? They are 1/400 on any given day. You just expose yourself more times like playing Russian roulette which is 1/6 but you could spin the revolver and shoot at your head 10,000 times and actually live.

You could go one day and on that day it is 1/400....skip 398 days and it is 1/400, go the 398 days in between and it was 1/400 each day. You could go on of a million days and you did not increase the risk. It's 1/400 on the millionth day and even though you went out many multiples of 400, you magically did not get bitten. Some other poor suckers got bitten, but you did not, but one in 400 people are getting bitten on that trip to the ocean....you just got off the hook every time and every time you go to the ocean things get reset to zero so today it is 1/400 AGAIN, not 1/399, then 1/398, down to 1/5, 1/4,1/3, 1/2 to the last one where you number is up....that's the beauty....your number is never up. It gets reset on every outing.

You can take the risk to zero for sure. Never do the activity. But once you do it, it's 1/400 (or whatever that denominator is). If that was not the case, you absolutely would not want Gold card fliers on your airplane. Those guys flying 100K-250K miles per year, their presence MUST increase the chance of your plane crashing....and we know that is not the case!
Last edited by: devashish_paul: Aug 30, 16 18:05

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