If someone has been in a plane crash, what are the odds they will be in two crashes? Shouldn’t you fly with them to be safer? And if a plane crashes, shouldn’t you take the next plane out–what are the odds two planes in a row will crash?
Such strange ends of the flowchart, where intuition fails and plain old math must win the day, are the subject of a fascinating headscratcher of a blog post at the New York Times. Don’t know how I’ve missed it, but the author, Steven Strogatz, has penned a series of such pieces for the Times (online only) about topics mathematical. Getting your head around these things is powerful stuff, and if you like to make sure your brain doesn’t fill up with cobwebs, I highly recommend his articles. The blog is here.
Oh, and the odds of crashing in a commercial airliner (extraordinarily low, though I always have a hard time feeling like that’s true) remain the same, 1 in several million, no matter who’s on the flight, no matter if another plane had a problem. Nothing changes it, and expecting that it will is very much like something called the Gambler’s Fallacy, which feels right, but nonetheless isn’t. Fun stuff to read about.
(H/T to Leisure Guy)
