Skiing and Risk

Dougski wrote

But for some reason the mother involved in the subject ski death wants to assign blame to Hunter Mountain for operating a ski slope.

What do you think the reason could be?

billyymc would you mind if I broke this thread out with you as the owner starting here:

http://forum.nyskiblog.com/Skier-deaths-at-Hunter-Mt-tp4147804p4148590.html

This thread makes me uncomfortable, coming after a mother's grief.  Based on some PMs I'm not alone.  I know I contributed too.

billyymc wrote

This is one of the dumbest posts about statistics I've ever read on the internet. It shows a complete lack of understanding of statistical design, methodology, and interpretation. So much so that trying to explain to you why it's so stupid would be futile.

You're welcome. billyymc out.

LOL.  

You post some nonsense back of the envelope calculation that "proves" skiing is safe, and then use it and "statistics" as a weapon against every other poster that disagrees with you.  Then I come in and rip into your incorrect calculations and the assumptions you've been pushing from it, and your response is tell me I'm incorrect, not in anyway prove it, and then take your ball and leave?

I don't usually get into troll fights with strangers on the internet but this is truly special.

Being someone who works in data I couldn't let this go unsolved.  I used the same NSAA source as billyymc: https://www.nsaa.org/media/68045/NSAA-Facts-About-Skiing-Snowboarding-Safety-10-1-12.pdf



So there you have it. TLDR?  If you account for time, skiing is 4 to 9 times more dangerous then firearms.

Basically what I did here was use the skier fatalities and skier days number to get deaths/skier_day.  Then if you assumed that every person in the us skied every day of the year I was able to create a comparable death/100k people to firearms.  This showed that about 39 people per 100k would die from skiing as compared to about 10 from firearms.

Now the problem is a "skier day" isn't really defined in terms of hours or minutes.  How many hours does the average skier spend on the slopes?  I estimated about 4 hours (which is probably low).  If you multiply that by 3 to get a 12 hour day you get about 92 skier deaths/ 100k people.  If people really ski 3 hours on average and you multiply by four you get 122 deaths/100k people.

In short skiing is WAY more dangerous then the general firearm death rate.  Comparing to driving is hard cause you would have to account per mile driven or time behind the wheel, but the statistic given by IHS is 11.4 deaths per 100,000.  This is again significantly lower then my estimate of 39 skier deaths/100k on the low end.  Comparing to automobile deaths would need more work but it's probably true that skiing is way more dangerous then even being in a car

JTG4eva! wrote

Lies....

JTG4eva! wrote

Damn Lies...

JTG4eva! wrote

.....and statistics!

I was just thinking of that quote...
I think it was originally reported as “damnable”

Anyone can do math. Your assumptions are specious. Your methodology is flawed.  You talked about the misapplication of statistics then you go bend them all to hell.

Congratulations on your wrongness and your math. You win.

Are they perfect? No.  But they are a hell of a lot better and closer to the truth then what you did.

Go ahead and apply a quantitative metric to your calculation and we can compare methodology.  Cause right now all you did was compare totals.  It's like saying less New York City residents per 100k die behind the wheel then the residents of the rest of the country.  Does that mean New Yorkers are better drivers? No, it means New Yorkers spend less time in cars cause they have other modes of transportation.

TheGreatAbyss wrote

Being someone who works in data I couldn't let this go unsolved.

Not trying to get in the way of a good interwebz  kerfuffle or nuthin’, but I don’t want to think and I gotta ask....

You convert a figure for deaths per skier day assuming that everybody skis every day, right?  What percentage of the US population uses guns, every day?  It’s surely not all 327,000,000.  So, wouldn’t you similarly have to convert the fire arms death figure?

TheGreatAbyss wrote

If you account for time, skiing is 4 to 9 times more dangerous then firearms.

There are so many things wrong with what you did that I really don't care to address them all. There really are.

So here's just one. You're trying to equate skiing time with some sort of equivalent exposure to firearms time I guess. That seems to be what you're attempting. But that's impossible to do. Your equivalency fails because there's no measure of time exposed to a firearm. Or any variation of that that you want to make up to try and make your point.

You're also attempting to compare the risk of people who choose to engage in something vs people who are passively exposed to something.

Your attempt at equivalency makes no sense, regardless of whether your math is done correctly. The worst work ois done when you start with illogical thinking.

Skiing has risks. But it is relatively safe.

I'm sorry I got you so riled up. Please feel free to post again. I won't continue to tell you you're wrong.

Good question, and I welcome people with constructive criticism feedback.

The people who own guns aren't usually the people who die from guns.  The firearm death rate is really a background rate of just being a society that has guns in it.   Everyday I go through 34th street Herald Square I'm at risk of getting mowed down in a mass shooting.  

So my comparison was saying everyday we are alive with guns vs everyday if we all went skiing

1) Your initial comparison was to firearms - that's why I used it.
2) See my response to JT, we are always exposed to firearms all the time.  Hence the comparison

TheGreatAbyss wrote

Good question, and I welcome people with constructive criticism feedback.

The people who own guns aren't usually the people who die from guns.  The firearm death rate is really a background rate of just being a society that has guns in it.   Everyday I go through 34th street Herald Square I'm at risk of getting mowed down in a mass shooting.  

So my comparison was saying everyday we are alive with guns vs everyday if we all went skiing

OMG. Mass shootings are one of the least probable ways of dying from a firearm.

Your math is assuming everyone is exposed to a gun all the time. You're so fucking wrong that your grandmother is fucking wrong.

Holy shit you're wrong.

I know I said I wouldn't tell you that again. But I was wrong.

billyymc wrote

Holy shit you're wrong.

I know I said I wouldn't tell you that again. But I was wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Gun violence in the United States results in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries annually.[4] In 2013, there were 73,505 nonfatal firearm injuries (23.2 injuries per 100,000 persons),[5][6] and 33,636 deaths due to "injury by firearms" (10.6 deaths per 100,000 persons).[7] These deaths included 21,175 suicides,[7] 11,208 homicides,[8] 505 deaths due to accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, and 281 deaths due to firearms use with "undetermined intent".[7] The ownership and control of guns are among the most widely debated issues in the country.

That 33k figure is not just mass shootings, and is what I used in my calculation.  My Herald Square was just an example

but reading this you can make an argument that suicides shouldn't be included, which actually makes firearms safer and would lower it 3.36 deaths per 100k.  Meaning my low comparison shows skiing is 11 X more dangerous then living with firearms around us.

billyymc wrote

Skiing has risks. But it is relatively safe.

Or put another way....skiing IS dangerous, just not AS dangerous as other activities.

I know, I know.....you know what “risk” is (because you probably actuarial-ize such things behind your desk all day), but you can’t define “danger” (because I guess there is no table for that?).  Sorry, that’s where you lose a point or two.   You understand “risk” in skiing, but risk of what?  Hurting yourself?  Killing yourself?  Dangerous outcomes like that, I’m assuming.

So, by saying skiing “has its risks” you are admitting the real possibility of dangerous/bad outcomes.  

So, now that you will OBVIOUSLY stop saying skiing isn’t dangerous , I’ll let you two get back to figuring out what is or is not more dangerous (or, would you prefer risky-er? ) than skiing!

Oh, and why limit the analysis to just deaths, isn’t the risk of injury even greater?

Carry on, my wayward sons....

TheGreatAbyss wrote

2) See my response to JT, we are always exposed to firearms all the time.  Hence the comparison

From the peanut gallery....

Eh.  If you assume everyone comes in close proximity to skis every day, you also have to assume everyone comes in close proximity to a fire arm every day, which isn’t the case.

Hence, we need more guns!

hah

Okay here's a more accurate (probably not perfect) comparison to driving as that is an active activity




sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

So regardless of time, if you are just comparing an average day of driving to an average day of skiing, skiing is about 2 - 2.4 times as dangerous.  The problem is I'm not accounting for how many people (such as children) are in a car driven by the average American, so consider it directional

TheGreatAbyss wrote

hah

Okay here's a more accurate (probably not perfect) comparison to driving as that is an active activity




sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

So regardless of time, if you are just comparing an average day of driving to an average day of skiing, skiing is about 2 - 2.4 times as dangerous.  The problem is I'm not accounting for how many people (such as children) are in a car driven by the average American, so consider it directional

Could you break this out per-mile-skied please

I'm assuming you are being facetious, but if you can find me that data then sure...

This is getting stupid.

1) When I made my initial comparison I intentionally left out other types of gun deaths. If you include suicide and accidental deaths the rate of gun deaths per 100k people is even higher obviously. Much higher. I was making the point that you're more likely to die of homicide than from skiing. Even though homicide accounts for a small portion of gun deaths.

2) We were initially talking about deaths, not injuries.

3) 3 deaths at Hunter is a an outlier statistically. Do the fucking math right and you can not argue that. I'd be willing to bet Hunter's insurance guys have been in the office this year, because they are ALL about probabilities.

4) Great Abyss, your math is way wrong. When you did your math to try and make the skiing / gun exposure equivalency, the rate of exposure to guns was constant, but you assumed all of the sudden every person skis. To try and do what you were trying to do you'd have to assume that the rate of gun exposure stays the same and the rate of skiers stays the same. So some people are around guns a lot, some openly, some people may never be around a gun at all in a given day. Similarly we have the same 10 million skiers or whatever the number was, but now you add 317 million people who don't ski. The rate of ski deaths per 100k people goes way down, and the rate of gun deaths per 100k people stays the same. Your logic and basis was wrong.

5) Perhaps a better comparison if we want to talk about gun deaths vs ski deaths would be compare the rate of gun deaths among gun owners vs the rate of ski deaths per skiers. I don't feel like searching for the data but I've seen it. If you own a gun the probability of getting dying by gunshot goes way up. Way higher per 100k gun owners than the rate of ski deaths per 100k skiers.

6) I didn't read your logic in the driving example but if you did the same math as in the gunshot example and assumed everyone skis (i.e. you changed a variable) vs a constant rate of driving, then your logic is flawed in the same was an number 4 above. If you can't see the error that's ok. I don't really care.

7) It's absolutely correct that danger and risk are not exactly the same thing. Danger is the exposure or possibility of harm or loss. So if you think about it like that danger is consequences (harm or loss) factored by risk (risk being possibility/probability). Is skiing dangerous? A little. Not because the consequences are low - obviously there are potentially very harmful or fatal consequences. But because in general the risk is low, and we have SOME control over ow much risk we are exposed to. Skiing is not dangerous.

8) There is more danger in illogical thinking than is most other activities that we engage in.

9) If you guys want to keep debating go for it. If you want to believe skiing is dangerous that's cool too.

10) I'm not an actuary. I've worked in finance and defense, and I've been a writer and a photographer. I don't own a gun, but I do ski. I don't feel alarmed about either.

11) This one goes to 11.

billyymc wrote

Is skiing dangerous? [Yes] A little.

It’s ok, my work here is done.