Things That Hardly Matter

John Stossel continues to write about the "Fear Industrial Complex" this week over at Real Clear Politics. In this week's installment, he covers why the news media is completely unable to separate real statistical worries from irrelevant, wildly improbable events that shouldn't even concern us. One major reason: mathematically challenged English majors inhabiting America's newsrooms. (Five out of four reporters don't understand fractions.)

Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming "crisis" and the coming of bird flu.

Bird flu was called the No. 1 threat to the world. But bird flu has killed no one in America, while regular flu — the boring kind — kills tens of thousands. New York City internist Marc Siegel says that after the media hype, his patients didn't want to hear that.

"I say, 'You need a flu shot.' You know the regular flu is killing 36,000 per year. They say, 'Don't talk to me about regular flu. What about bird flu?'"

Here's another example. What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for "20/20," I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I'm sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Parents don't know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.

Media exposure clouds our judgment about real-life odds. Of course, it doesn't help that viewers are as ignorant about probability as reporters are.

To demonstrate that, "20/20" ran an experiment. We asked people to put on blindfolds and then to pick up a red jellybean from one of two plates that held a mixture of red and white jellybeans. We offered $1 to anyone who could pick up a red bean.

Here's the catch: While one plate held 20 jellybeans and the other 100, the plate with 20 beans had a higher percentage of red ones. We put up signs that told people this clearly: "10 percent red" of the small plate and just "7 percent red" of the big plate.

Surprisingly, even with the percentage signs in front of them, a third of the people picked the plate with 100 beans.

Actually, it doesn't surprise me one bit, but then I understand math a little more than the average American. One thing I take exception to with Stossel this week, though. Just because some things are actually statistically unlikely does not mean they should not be addressed. Specifically, he mentions that terrorism is statistically unlikely. That, strictly speaking, is correct. Most people , at least in the US, will be unlikely to be direct victims in the short term. However, in an age of nuclear weapons terrorism is not something to be ignored. Because the odds would change drastically with the first mushroom cloud. Better to address it before that day arrives.

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  By Rightmom, Wednesday, 4 April , 2007 @ 11:43 am

  on September 11th 2001 3000 people were statistically not supposed to be victims of terrorism and yet they were, hmm.

Other Links to this Post

1. Maggie's Farm — Wednesday, 4 April , 2007 @ 1:42 pm