TBD on Ning
Fear, are you consumed by it?
What if you wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him or her outside and unattended for that to actually happen? When journalist and author Lenore Skenazy asked people to take a guess, the answers showed a country increasingly, and irrationally, consumed by fear.
“I’m not saying there is no danger in the world, but we live in really safe times, and statistically they are as safe as they were in 1970,” she says. Noting that crime rates climbed in the 70s and 80s before falling in the 1990s, she points out that “if you were outside as a kid anytime in the 70s and 80s, your kids are safer – not just safe, but safer - than you were.” The chance of any child being abducted and killed by a stranger is roughly one in 1.5 million (the odds vary slightly depending on the number of abductions per year relative to the number of children).
And yet, whenever she points this out she is constantly reminded “but what if that one is yours?” It’s as if people cannot imagine being part of the 1,499,999,” she says. “They only see the one – they only see the one on the milk carton, they see one on TV, and they see the one sitting in front of themselves with the cutesy eyes, and they don’t want it to be them.”
It was odd; instead of real numbers rescuing parents from the false sense risk, they actually worked against rational thinking. No matter how big the denominator, people still focused on the number one – which, naturally, stood for their child.
Perhaps the problem needed to be approached from a different angle, she thought. What if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him outside, and unattended for that to be likely to happen? When she asked people to take a guess, the most she ever heard was three months. Some people ventured a day, an hour, and even - implausibly - ten minutes.
Skenazy turned to Warwick Cairns, the British author of “About the Size of It: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things” and “How to Live Dangerously” (“a prolonged, statistically-based plea to stop living in our beige world of risk-minimalization,” as the Times of London put it).
Cairns, who did graduate work in English literature at Yale with legendary critic Harold Bloom and, among a series of diverting segues to becoming a champion of numerical thinking, dug wells on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, had calculated these very odds for British children. It would be easy to run the numbers for American kids.
The answer to Skenazy’s question was… 750,000 years. By reframing the way the risk was framed, she took the focus away from one, and placed it on what the chance was in real time – and 750,000 years is a far more arresting and reassuring number than one in 1.5 million.
http://stats.org/stories/2009/land_free_home_scared_sept2_09.html
“I’m not saying there is no danger in the world, but we live in really safe times, and statistically they are as safe as they were in 1970,” she says. Noting that crime rates climbed in the 70s and 80s before falling in the 1990s, she points out that “if you were outside as a kid anytime in the 70s and 80s, your kids are safer – not just safe, but safer - than you were.” The chance of any child being abducted and killed by a stranger is roughly one in 1.5 million (the odds vary slightly depending on the number of abductions per year relative to the number of children).
And yet, whenever she points this out she is constantly reminded “but what if that one is yours?” It’s as if people cannot imagine being part of the 1,499,999,” she says. “They only see the one – they only see the one on the milk carton, they see one on TV, and they see the one sitting in front of themselves with the cutesy eyes, and they don’t want it to be them.”
It was odd; instead of real numbers rescuing parents from the false sense risk, they actually worked against rational thinking. No matter how big the denominator, people still focused on the number one – which, naturally, stood for their child.
Perhaps the problem needed to be approached from a different angle, she thought. What if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him outside, and unattended for that to be likely to happen? When she asked people to take a guess, the most she ever heard was three months. Some people ventured a day, an hour, and even - implausibly - ten minutes.
Skenazy turned to Warwick Cairns, the British author of “About the Size of It: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things” and “How to Live Dangerously” (“a prolonged, statistically-based plea to stop living in our beige world of risk-minimalization,” as the Times of London put it).
Cairns, who did graduate work in English literature at Yale with legendary critic Harold Bloom and, among a series of diverting segues to becoming a champion of numerical thinking, dug wells on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, had calculated these very odds for British children. It would be easy to run the numbers for American kids.
The answer to Skenazy’s question was… 750,000 years. By reframing the way the risk was framed, she took the focus away from one, and placed it on what the chance was in real time – and 750,000 years is a far more arresting and reassuring number than one in 1.5 million.
http://stats.org/stories/2009/land_free_home_scared_sept2_09.html
Views: 22
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Whiny Old Bastard on
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Daniel Shugha, Stay on topic, don't go off into the Ozone, follow the light Daniel, follow the light.
This is about raising children.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Blattenbauer on
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Don't think I was off in the Ozone. But if you are talking about living in fear in our neighborhoods I agree that things have changed a lot since I was a kid. I have lived in rural areas most of my life and rarely did people lock their doors when they left home. Now most people lock their homes because a lot more crime has crept into the smaller towns and communities. There are burglaries, drug related crimes, and even occassional murders even in small communities these days. I cannot imagine living in a large city. Having spent four winters in the Phoenix area I wonder how people can possibly feel comfortable raising their kids amongst all the crime in that area.
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I rode my bike or pony for miles and miles, sometimes to the next town, I was often gone from morning to night. Explored caves and old mines, went fishing, hunting,swimming, dug up old Indian graves, met interesting people, etc. etc. all when I was 8,9,10.... years old, and yet I still made it. They would lock my parents up for giving me that freedom today. It's very sad to me.
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Permalink Reply by funesthememorious on
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Most people do not understand probability and chance, in fact a lot of smart people don't. Also religious types often invent false causality and confuse cause and effect. Hence fear and paranoid behavior.
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Permalink Reply by Chez moi on
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Neither do I, Boomer. I am always amazed when I meet people who ask "Aren't you afraid, living on your own out in the country?" And I have met a number of women who are afraid when they have to live alone. Inconceivable to me.
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Permalink Reply by ZenDog on
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Jeez, Orian. Do I really look like I'm consumed by fear?
Then again, someone certainly got to Sara Palin, now didn't they. And don't tell me it was just Letterman, because I know how it works. There's a piece missing, one the rest of us didn't hear. Some little skit made just for her ears. And then in the paper, there it was . . . proof of death . . .
It's no wonder really, her hysterical claims of DEATH PANELS . . . but we're all watching the health care debate, and why not? After all, she helped steer us there . . .
We're all so busy not saying what it is we mean to say that nobody knows what we are saying any more, and that is not a foundation upon which you can build anything at all.
i SAY THE WAR ON DRUGS MUST END. EITHER WE MUST ENFORCE THE LAW, OR WE MUST CHANGE IT.
THAT will cut out about 98 percent of the bullshit right there.
S-A-Y, where'd jya get the hat? Off the set of Mulholland Drive? And did ja get the boots there too?
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Good God!!!! What am I, a freakin magnet?
Ok, (deep breath) Lets start over.
This is about parents hovering over their spawn constantly, and never letting them explore the world on their own
It has NOTHING to do with POLITICS, my LID or my KICKS. See the web site below for more information.
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
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Don't taunt me woman.
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Permalink Reply by larry kremis on
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Did you see the sequel to "9"? I forget the name of it.
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Good Grief!! You people are everywhere.
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Finally
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You people missed your calling, you should have been comedians.
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