Usefully Useless

It’s important to understand probabilities and statistics, so here’s a whole bunch of them I’ve compiled from various sources.

Death from asteroid or meteorite strike: 1 in 1,960,000,000
Injury due to asteroid or meteorite impact: 1 in 210,000,000
Death due to earthquake (UK): 1 in 120,000,000
Death from anthrax: 1 in 55,053,000
Death from an act of terrorism (2008): 1 in 44,000,000 (note 5)
Death from venom (snake, jellyfish, spider, etc.): 1 in 54,050,000 (note 1)
Death from accidental fall: 1 in 45,000,000 (note 2)
Poisoning by cleaners, paints, other chemicals: 1 in 27,000,000
Death from an act of terrorism (1987): 1 in 19,000,000 (note 5)
Under 16 killed by stranger: 1 in 17,800,000
Any specific combination of 24 coin tosses: 1 in 16,777,216
UK National Lottery, all six numbers: 1 in 13,983,816
Death due to police action: 1 in 11,000,000
Death from salmonella: 1 in 10,587,115
Property damage due to earthquake: 1 in 4,900,000
Under 16 killed by his/her own family: 1 in 4,300,000
Death from lightning strike: 1 in 3,100,000
UK National Lottery, 5 numbers + bonus ball: 1 in 2,330,636
Randomly selected person is a paedophile: 1 in 1,300,000
Death from necrotising fascitis (flesh eating bacteria): 1 in 1,250,000
Death in a plane crash: 1 in 660,000
Royal flush in five card poker: 1 in 649,739
Death in a rail accident: 1 in 525,000
Death by firearm in England and Wales (1990): 1 in 510,000
Death by poisonous gases or vapours: 1 in 495,000
Death by electrocution: 1 in 493,000
Death by a falling object: 1 in 375,000
Death due to MRSA infection (2007): 1 in 300,000
Death by firearm in England and Wales (2007): 1 in 264,000
Death due to being stabbed in Greater London: 1 in 240,000
Death due to lack of healthcare: 1 in 83,720
Death in a residential housefire: 1 in 83,025
UK National Lottery, 5 numbers: 1 in 55,491
Death in a road accident: 1 in 6,500
Death from suicide (England and Wales, 2008): 1 in 4,350
Death from influenza: 1 in 4,100
Death from badly treated diabetes: 1 in 4,000
Death from accidental self-inflicted injury: 1 in 2,900
Death from chronic respiratory disease (asthma, cystic fibrosis, etc.): 1 in 2,200
Death from a stroke: 1 in 1,650
A Dutch dyke will flood in the next year: 1 in 1,250
Odds you will never marry (2007 rate): 1 in 1,200
UK National Lottery, 4 numbers: 1 in 1,032
Thames Barrier will flood in the next year: 1 in 1,000
Death from cancer: 1 in 500
Death from enemy action during active duty: 1 in 480 (note 4)
Death from heart disease: 1 in 390
Sharing a birthday with a randomly selected person: 1 in 370.4 (Note 7)
Being involved in any knife-crime in England and Wales (2005): 1 in 177 (note 8 )
Odds you will marry in the next year (2007 rate): 1 in 111
Britons as a proportion of global population: 1 in 100
UK National Lottery, 3 numbers: 1 in 57
UK National Lottery, any win: 1 in 54
Card deal is any specific card: 1 in 52
Odds police will arrest you for something that isn’t illegal (2009): 1 in 36
You are ill right now: 1 in 30
Home computer being an Apple Mac: 1 in 25
Being on the UK DNA Database: 1 in 19
Next meal is fast-food: 1 in 10
Developing or having an incurable disease of any severity: 1 in 10
PCs having at least one item of malware: 1 in 8
Undergraduate achieving a First: 1 in 7
Driver has an endorsed licence: 1 in 7
Randomly selected couple will be infertile: 1 in 6.7 (Note 6)
Chance you went to church last Sunday: 1 in 6
Die throw is any specific number: 1 in 6
Attending a private funeral in the next year: 1 in 5.6
A randomly selected child is obese: 1 in 5.5
Your front door has a CCTV camera aimed at it: 1 in 5
Odds a 13-17 year old has performed some act which was legally paedophilia: 1 in 4.2 (note 9)
You are obese: 1 in 4.1
Odds you have an illegal item in your household: 1 in 4
Odds that a car driver will break the law during his next journey: 1 in 3.2
Broadband speed is less than half of that advertised: 1 in 3
Black man being on the UK DNA Database: 1 in 2.7
Odds two children in a class of 23 will share a birthday: 1 in 2
Odds your first sexual encounter was legally paedophilia: 1 in 2 (note 3)
You have used illegal drugs: 1 in 1.9

Notes:
1. World-wide.
2. Age dependent.
3. 53% of the population is not virginal at the age of 18 (2009 estimate)
4. Assumes you’re already a soldier.
5. Terrorism deaths that year divided by population that year.
6. Defined as no conception after one year of unprotected sex.
7. It isn’t one in 365 as randomly selected 365 people could have all different birthdays! Given by 1-(365/364).
8. Includes merely carrying a blade longer than 3 inches in a public place
9. From estimated “sexting” rates.

Ten years ago, smoking-related illnesses cost the NHS (England) £1.7 billion per year on treatment. Today that figure is £2.7 billion. Anti-smoking lobby group Ash sees this as a success of their lobby, claiming at least a £300,000 saving per year as the number of smokers has dropped from 12 million to 9 million.

I’m not so sure. Smoking was in decline anyway, before the measures of the last five or so years (which have not altered the decline rate), public smoking ban or not, the numbers would have been about the same. Let’s take a look at those figures again, though. Adjusting for inflation we see that ten years ago, we spent £2.38 billion (2008 pounds) on smoking-related illnesses and in real terms, the outlay has only increased by £320,000 – Or about the price of ten years of care for two breast cancer (which isn’t smoking related) patients.

Now let’s take a look at demographics, the thing the anti-smoking lobby doesn’t want you to see. That’s right, we have the 1950s and 1960s baby boomers reaching their 50s and 60s, ages where smoking-related illnesses typically take hold. Why’s the figure increasing then? Because the population is getting older – There are more older people! Unless Ash would prefer us leading our senior citizens to the gas chambers, they’re just going to have to live with it.

The anti-smoking lobby and particularly Ash, have been traditionally a very deceptive bunch. They go on about how much the NHS loses a year and how it’d better be spent on other illnesses (appeal to emotion fallacy) but what they don’t say is that in the tax year 2007-2008, HM Treasury recieved £8 billion in tobacco tax of cigarettes alone, discounting things like hand-rolling tobacco, pipe tobacco and the smaller specialist tobaccos such as chewing and snuff which add up to around another billion. Smokers pay for their own treatment through tobacco taxes and, indeed, are perhaps the only group in the UK who cover their NHS expenses near-directly. They also turn the Treasury quite a tidy profit of £5 billion too.

If anti-smoking programmes are successful, that £5 billion hole in Treasury funds will have to come from somewhere else…like perhaps the NHS.

No part of this post should be seen as supportive of tobacco use. Repeated and valid scientific study has shown that there is no harmless lower bound for tobacco use, any regular use at all at any level is significantly harmful to health and in particular directly linked to chronic and fatal cardiac and pulmonary diseases. Indirect use (passive smoking) is another matter entirely, however.