The real risk of an American dying in a terrorist attack

Comedy Central’s Indecision presents some rather unsurprising statistics that need to be read by every member of Congress. What is an American’s likelihood of dying from a terrorist attack?

According to government statistics, roughly as many Americans are killed annually by unstable furniture and falling televisions as are killed in terrorist attacks.
What else is more dangerous than a terrorist attack? 16 oz. sodas, inconvenience of going through TSA security at an airport (which discourages many people from flying, causing them to die on the highways), use of your bathroom, texting, autoerotic asphyxia, alcohol and tobacco, weather, suicide, hospital infections and doctor errors and stress. One more thing: What is the risk of an American dying in a terrorist attack? Ronald Bailey of Reason suggests a very liberal estimate (an estimate assuming death to be more likely) would be 1 in 1.7 million, and he offers these additional statistics:
Taking these figures into account, a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.
This same article indicates that the U.S. spends $400 million dollars per life saved in antiterrorism security measures (cost$1 Trillion since 2001), but this number doesn’t include military expenses by the United States. It's also important to keep in mind that the U.S. spends more on maintaining a military than the rest of the world combined. Perhaps if Americans weren't so afflicted with innumeracy, we could accept the true (miniscule) risk of dying from a terrorist act, and focus on preventing much more likely forms of death. Perhaps we could spend a significant chunk of that "anti-terrorism" money to combat innumeracy.

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Al Qaeda injures or kills 1.2 million Americans every year

Ooops. What I meant to say was that because Americans choose to text or talk while driving, Americans cause 1.2 million traffic accidents per year. Many of these accidents cause serious injuries and deaths. As the linked article states, many of these tragedies are caused by people who are yapping or texting while on-the-job for an American business. I'm waiting to hear our politicians announce a war on cell phone use while driving--an all-out war employing check points, high tech surveillance and violations of fundamental civil liberties. This war won't happen, though, because these injuries, like 99% of the problems America currently faces (these things include wildly out-0f-control obesity, repealing Glass-Steagall and gutting the First Amendment) are self-inflicted. Further, our calculus for deciding public policy is mostly geared to finding an other to blame. In America, a tragedy caused by someone deemed to be an outsider is 1,000 times more "serious" than a tragedy caused by an American. The needless injuries and deaths due to cell phone use constitute Exhibit A.

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The size of many things, large and small

I've seen similar websites allowing you to compare tiny and large things of the world, but this is a new one called "The Scale of the Universe." I spent ten minutes enjoying the comparison, then decided to share the link to the site. Here's one thing that I noticed for the first time: The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 250,000 miles. If you traveled that long distance, starting from the surface of the sun, traveling toward the center of the sun, you'd be only 1/3 of the way through the sun.

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The facts regarding unintended pregnancy

Guttmacher Institute has released a Fact Sheet on unintended pregnancies in the United States. Here's what I learned:

Most American families want two children. About half (49%) of the 6.7 million pregnancies in the United States each year (3.2 million) are unintended. By age 45, more than half of all American women will have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and three in 10 will have had an abortion. Unintended pregnancy rates are highest among poor and low-income women, women aged 18–24, cohabiting women and minority women. In 2006, black women had the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any racial or ethnic groups. In 2006, 43% of unintended pregnancies ended in abortion and 48% ended in birth. Compared with higher-income women, poor and low-income women are less likely to end an unintended pregnancy by abortion. In 2006, two-thirds (64%) of the 1.6 million births resulting from unintended pregnancies were paid for by public insurance programs, primarily Medicaid. Total public expenditures for births resulting from unintended pregnancies nationwide were estimated to be $11.1 billion in 2006. Two-thirds of U.S. women at risk for unintended pregnancy use contraception consistently and correctly throughout the course of any given year; these women account for only 5% of all unintended pregnancies. In contrast, the 19% of women at risk who use contraception inconsistently or incorrectly account for 43% of all unintended pregnancies. The 16% of women at risk who do not practice contraception at all for a month or more during the year account for 52% of all unintended pregnancies. Without publicly funded family planning services, the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the United States would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens; the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double.

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What is randomness?

Radiolab's show on "Stochasticity" offers entertaining examples to explain the concept of randomness.   The story starts with the example of a 10 year old girl named "Laura Buxton" who released a balloon with a message: "Return this balloon to Laura Buxton."    The girl who received the balloon when it came down many miles away was another 10 year old girl named "Laura Buxton."  There were many other coincidences between the two Laura Buxtons. Contrary to the assumptions of most people, randomness involves results that look like patterns.  What about getting seven heads in a row? If you were only flipping the coin seven times, this can happen only one time out of 100, but if you get seven heads in a row somewhere in the process of flipping a coin 100 times, you can expect this to happen one time out of six, not improbable. Another example is the case of Evelyn Adams, who one the lottery twice in two consecutive years. If you look only at whether this will happen twice with the purchase of two tickets, it would only happen once in 17 trillion times. If you consider the entire universe of people who buy lottery tickets, the question becomes "what are the odds that somebody somewhere will win the lottery twice?" The answer to that question is that it would be surprising if that didn't happen repeatedly, and it has happened repeatedly (listen to minute 17 of the show). The lesson? (at minute 19) "If you don't see past yourself [to look at the big picture], you become prey to superstition." In the case of the Laura Buxtons, the story becomes much more interesting when we focus only on the similarities of the two girls and downplay the many many things they don't have in common.   But of course, listing their dissimilarities would not have been a good story, yet we prefer to believe in "magic"  (see min 20). See also, this post on patternicity.

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