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
If you were in Afghanistan in the army, you've got a smaller chance of dying in a five-year window than if you become a famous musician.
Five years in a war zone, 1.9% of people in the front line will die, whereas if you become a famous musician, 2.3% of you will die in five years.
There is a definite underlying statistical trend where lots of people become musicians in their early to mid-20s and being a musician has a greatly increased chance of dying in the next five years.
more musicians do die in their late 20s by a significant margin than normal people.
The trouble with a statistical trend is it doesn't really capture the public's imagination, whereas something like the 27 Club does.
And so the 27 Club is a product of this actual statistical trend, but it's a myth that people like talking about.
Although there was another spike in the early 30s.
What did you tell
Well, I was one of the mathematicians that they checked with, which is very good of them.
All my normal PR alarm bells went off because it came from the PR wing of a company.
And as I pointed out, it had a self-selecting sample.
So I raised my usual, it looks like a PR press release, bit of statistics, and I'd be very cautious.
Nevertheless, they ran with the story.
They did.
And they spoke to more eminent mathematicians than me, as you saw David Spiegelhalter.
I think this is great because when one of these press releases comes out, they ask a few people, but the story still runs regardless of how dubious the data may be.
Obviously, this is all different media outlets.
On this occasion, the company happened to not exist.
And at that point, they had to pull the press release.
But to be honest, there are countless other equally dubious press releases that have been turned into stories that are still out there.
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