Is it any wonder that people make poor choices? We're training them to be bad at math.
"Why are we even bothering to fight the stove fire? Only one in 50 of my appliances has burned!"
2. It’s not only about you. Lottery proceeds are used for all sorts of good things. Being part of an infection chain could infect and kill many people.
3. Note that absent measures, the odds of contracting and dying would rise up enormously.
4. At any rate, that’s not what Levine’s excellent column is about.
About that time, some journal reported that a certain state lottery offered worse odds than the old-time illegal numbers. Whether that is so, I don't know.
The good news for legislators is that people pay that regressive tax willingly. They will beef if you put up the taxes on property or gasoline, but not about lottery tickets.
But that's not really honest, is it? It's not "with good consequences" if the expected value is decidedly negative.
2. Lottery proceeds are used as an excuse for removing other sources of funding for those things. I've never heard of a case where a public good was better funded after the creation of a lottery. And the people buying lottery tickets tend to be those least able to afford it -- it's a regressive tax.
3. Yes, if you ignore the lotto advertising, the public health announcement is a good use of billboard space. It takes on a completely different meaning, though, in the context of "Ignore statistics and just think about having fun!"
4. The column seems to be about people gambling away their money on risky ventures that will not pay off. Do you not agree that this describes the state lottery?
and 1 in 100 odds of dying from a car accident.
it's less about being bad at math, and more about poorly trained intuitions around risk and being consistent in response.
Are we talking about on a trip to a grocery store, or this year, or in a life time?
The real point is not taking unnecessary risks, not just avoiding all risk in life.
About 36,500 people died in car accidents in the US in 2018 [1], so about 100 people per day die from car accidents in the US.
About 1,000 people are dying per day from COVID, currently [2].
Wouldn't this mean that the odds of dying from COVID are much higher than dying from a car accident? Which would contradict the odds I'm seeing in this thread.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
we don't know yet due to the newness of covid, meaning it's steady-state death rate is uncertain, but it seems very unlikely to overtake car accidents.
based on what we do know about covid now, its trajectory, and comparing to relatives, covid will probably only kill you the first time (and mostly if you're late in life) or not at all, so lifetime odds might end up between 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 5000.
lifetime odds of dying in a car accident is relatively known, at 1 in 100, so probably 50-100X more deadly than covid.
Because COVID will (hopefully) become less threatening over time as the pandemic resolves the lifetime odds of death from it will be lower.
[1] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-mortalit...
I don't think you can tell from a billboard alone how many people think of the lottery as more than just entertainment.