Matt Parker
speaker
278 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2010
last heard 8 Jul
Matt Parker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
However, your probability of dying actually goes up dramatically towards the end of your life and is much less earlier on.
So an average 30-something in the UK is only exposed to 2.5 micromorts on any normal day.
About half to one micromort each day is down to random accidents.
In 2008, for example, 96 people died because they fell out of bed.
This works out to be one micromort risk, due to dying from falling out of bed, for every 207 nights sleep you get.
If you really want to increase your chances of dying though, you need to do something like skydiving or scuba diving .
There are all sorts of ways you can pay good money to increase your chances of dying.
You can go hang gliding .
Or, of course, you could pay money to reduce your odds of dying.
If you look at what people spend on safety gear, such as crash helmets or optional airbags for cars, it works out that people value their own lives at approximately £25 for every micromort they can avoid.
This can be compared with Transport for London, who, for every micromort avoided by a commuter, will spend on average £1.40.
The reason a unit like micromorts can be useful is that as humans, we have no real intuitive sense of probability and risk.
We are oversensitive to some risks, and then blasé about something which might be much more dangerous.
You can spend your life worrying about what aspects of your diet might give you cancer and then just not think twice about crossing the road unnecessarily, which is actually a much bigger risk and far easier to avoid.
By crunching the numbers and calculating the statistical probability of death, we can approach risk in a much more logical manner and make informed choices.
Sure, we could instigate a national ban on duvets and enforce tucking in with sheets and blankets just to save those 96 lives a year.
But a more reasoned look at the statistics can put everything into perspective.
Although, to be honest, you probably didn't need statistics to know that it's not a good idea to take ecstasy while canoeing.
Showing 261–278 of 278 · page 14 of 14
← Previous