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in reply to Re: Altruism @ Microsoft
in thread Top goal for 2003

  Interesting facts. But I've always wondered how these things are figured.

  • Being struck by lighting and killed (4,210,857 to 1)

      Is this for the whole year or every second of everyday? Does that make any sense?

          --JD      

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    Re: Re: Re: Altruism @ Microsoft
    by Anonymous Monk on Jan 09, 2003 at 17:30 UTC

      Aloha,

      The chance depends on so many variables it's barely even worth considering if you're not planning to spend at least week researching it. As with any event, the chance of it occuring is completely dependent on your current situation. A statistic like that is of very little value as it is at best just the number of people in the world divided by the number of people in the world struck by lightning per year. The measurements of which are also highly unreliable..

      That said, take a look at How Likely Are You to Be Struck by Lightning?.

      Aloha

    		[reply]
    Re: Re: Re: Altruism @ Microsoft
    by Gerard (Pilgrim) on Jan 09, 2003 at 21:21 UTC
      Surely they would be the same thing...?

      1 in 4,210,857 of being struck (per second) would equate to a 31,536,000 in 132,793,586,352,000 chance of being struck per year.

      Regards,


      Gerard
    		[reply]
        Surely they would be the same thing...?

        Nope, not at all.

        Say you, Gerard, have a 10% chance of being flamed by me per second. This isn't the same as a 10% chance per year. Say I, the Anonymous Monk, decide to base the flame or not on a die roll. I Take a 10-sided die and roll it, if it comes up a 1, I flame, anything else, I don't (probably should be the other way around ;-)). Now, if I did this once a second and once a year, which scenario results in you having a greater chance of being flamed?

    		[reply]

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