I haven't seen Cruisejunkie brought for awhile until the Concordia disaster. As you know, Professor Klein did some remarkable statistical calaculations to quantify the relative safety of cruise ship travel vs living "on land."
So, I found this new problem that has also been addressed statictically with a similar scientific approach, and I thought I might make a good topic for examination by the media...
Several sites on the Internet state that falling coconuts kill 150 people each year. You might assume that “death by coconut” was a purely random occurrence, but that might just be what the coconuts want you to believe. What's are the chances that the coconuts are out to get you?
According to Wikipedia, 54 million tonnes of coconuts were produced in 2009. From this, we know that if each coconut weighs 10 lbs, then roughly 1.0×1010 coconuts were produced. Now, we could quibble about the actual number. Some grow in the wild which might make the actual number larger. Some coconuts are picked instead of falling, so that might make the actual number smaller. You can argue either way, so let’s stick with this figure just to keep the problem relatively simple.
There are 6.7×109 people in the world, each of which has about 1.5 ft2 of area that the coconut could land on giving a total area of about 1.0×1010 ft2. According to Wikipedia, the total land area in the world is about 1.5×108 km2. If people are randomly distributed across the land area of Earth, then the probability of being hit by a coconut is equal to the fraction of land area that people take up at any given time. Using Google’s calculator, we get
From this, we suspect that each year roughly 6 out of every one million people get bonked by a coconut.
......
People are so irrational. I saw my sister this weekend, and she proclaimed that she and her husband had decided they were no longer interested in cruising. (Have never cruised before) I tried explaining that less than 1 percent of the people ON the ship died, but it seems that those images and media portrayal are more convincing than actual numbers.
People are so irrational. I saw my sister this weekend, and she proclaimed that she and her husband had decided they were no longer interested in cruising. (Have never cruised before) I tried explaining that less than 1 percent of the people ON the ship died, but it seems that those images and media portrayal are more convincing than actual numbers.
That is so silly it is just as safe today as it has always been! I wonder why all of a sudden they figure it is so unsafe. Did they think that there wasnt a chance of something happening.
My brother and sister-in-law want to go on their first cruise and we were planning a group cruise. Saw her last week and she was discussing the Concordia...I thought oh man they are backing out of cruising with us. Nope!! the next thing she talked about was where we could cruise to and when. Thankful they are still ready to cruise!!
A Bad Day At Sea [with power] Always Beats A Good Day At Work
Alaska 2014 - haven't picked a cruise yet
Carnival: Glory 2004, Destiny 2008, Splendor 2009, Freedom 2011, Valor 2012
Celebrity: Summit 2011
Princess: Ruby 2010, Caribbean 2013
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Death by Coconut
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