Wesley Stevenson

speaker

1,470 appearances 54 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2010 last heard May 2015

Wesley Stevenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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More or Less · WS MoreOrLess: Fear of Flying · 2 Aug 2014 podcast

And this terrible cluster of accidents brings air travel into sharp focus. matched

But should we be surprised at three crashes happening in such a short period of time? matched

Sir David Spiegelhalter is the Winton Professor for the Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University in the UK. matched

And this is true of all random events, whether it be air accidents, incidences of leukaemia in children, or the times of day the babies are born. matched

They won't be evenly distributed, and you will always get clusters. matched

It's a theory of probability that's known as the Poisson distribution. matched

That is, if there are lots of opportunities for something to occur which only rarely happens, like a plane crash, it's actually more probable there'll be a short time between events. matched

So we should expect clusters, and we can't get away from the fact that crashes will happen. matched

But let's put this into context. matched

Arnold Barnett is a professor of statistics at MIT in the United States, and he's also worked in aviation safety for 35 years. matched

But is the safety record getting worse? matched

So far, 761 people have died in passenger airline accidents this year, which is nearly three times as many as 2013, and more than in 2012 and 2011. matched

But you need to look at the bigger picture, says Professor Barnett. matched

And it's less risky to fly than it is to travel by car or rail, and much less risky than travelling by motorbike. matched

This doesn't stop people being scared, though. matched

I mean, even David Spiegelhalter and Arnold Barnett both admitted to me that they're both nervous flyers. matched

So take some comfort that even the experts aren't always helped by the hard facts. matched

And the sad thing is, although your chance of being killed in a plane crash is very, very small, the chances that someone will be killed in any one year is probably pretty close to 100%. matched

Back to the Commonwealth Games. matched

They might be missing the likes of the USA, Russia, China and most of Europe. matched

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