Reality is stranger than we think

Driving in the mountains doesn't increase your odds of being struck by lightning? Having a career as a national park ranger in a mountain park doesn't increase your odds? OK then.

Yep. Statistics.

 

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Not when you are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of tall trees and mountains and a few towers with lightning rods more likely to get struck than you are. You know how lightning works right?

Sorry. The statistics are clearly against this EVER happening.

 

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His job clearly raised his risk of being struck by lightning.

So you are saying he wasn't hit by lightning 7 times?

 

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Actually it lessened it. The chances of you getting struck by lightning are vastly reduced by how many taller things there are around you. That's why people get struck on golf courses and soccer fields. There's no trees around to take the hit instead.

It happened, even though it was highly improbable. That's the nature of synchronicity.

 

Do you also believe that smoking lessens your risk of lung cancer, and drinking reduces your risk of an accident involving drunk driving?

 

That is not a logical conclusion. Nothing is needed to make unlikely things happen. They just happen less often than likely things.

 

It's the only logical conclusion, particularly considering the other option of explaining these events as just random luck. Or random bad luck. I don't believe in random luck, do you?

 

Why would being in a huge forested parkland of trees and mountains taller than you INCREASE your odds of being struck by lightning? Do you think lightning favors trees people are standing next to?


Shenandoah National Park

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From Lightning Safety Article:

"If you're out in the backcountry and cannot get to a building or a vehicle, the safest places to find shelter are among low, rolling hills or in areas of forest where the trees are of roughly equal height. Since lightning is most likely to strike the highest object in a particular area, stay away from open areas to avoid being the tallest object." - See more at: http://www.alertdiver.com/Lightning#sthash.L2wGi4U5.dpuf

 

You dont know for sure that there were any tall objects around when he got struck. Have you been to Shenandoah park, and visited the locations where he was struck? Six of the seven strikes happened in the park. I think that he spent way too much time outside during lightning storms. I wonder how many storms he was caught in that didn't result in him being struck by lightning.

 

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THis is one of the ranger stations. Dont know if it is one where he was struck. The park website has lots of pictures. Looks like a cool place to visit.

 

I know the chances of getting struck in a forested hilly area are much less than in an open area or an area with only a few trees. And since the park is heavily forested, one simply cannot say being a park ranger there made him more vulnerable to lightning. If anything it made him LESS vulnerable.

 

how well do you know statistics? you posted an article that had odds of septillions so i don't think you know a real lot. i am no expert either i amy add.

 

Has "some kind" of corroboration beyond the various Amazing / Strange / Remarkable sites around the web. If being mentioned in a SciAm article counts:
Statistician David J. Hand Shows How the Seemingly Improbable Becomes a Sure Thing

"The same went for a sportsman named Major Walter Summerford, struck three times, whose gravestone took a shot four years after his death."

 

Well it certainly explains away the amazingness. But I'm not buying it. Each person who get's struck by lightning is a separate independent instance. The odds of getting struck gets reset for each one. So it doesn't matter if there are hundred or a million people who get struck by lightning annually. The odds of it happening to anyone 7 times are still astronomically slim.

The actual odds of getting struck by lightning in the state of Virginia can be found here:

http://discovertheodds.com/what-are-the-odds-of-being-struck-by-lightning/

"ODDS OF BEING STRUCK ONCE BY LIGHTNING IN THE STATE OF VIRGINIA: 1 in 1,349,434"

 

so you have an expert in the field of statistics explaining it and you don't buy it? well, show your workings as to why it isn't true.

 

I asked you this before: What are the odds of anyone getting struck by lightning 7 times? Care to answer it now?

 

Curious about any long sequences of coincidences or fortunate events, as if some kind of "pseudo-law" was hovering around somebody over their lifetime, I tried "real life Teela Brown". But nothing interesting popped-up. Amusingly, "long streak of luck" instead produced accounts of long sequences of bad luck.

 

From article:

"The consequence of her state was that she'd led such a charmed and worry-free life that she was emotionally immature and unprepared for "harsh reality." The Puppeteer saw this as a kind of artificial selection, tending to breed for a psionic power of good luck. He hoped Teela would bring luck and success to the entire expedition."

That makes a weird sort of sense to me. Childlike people tend to get taken care of somehow, not just by other people, but by fate itself. At least ideally. See Forrest Gump? Or Chauncey Gardner in "Being There"..

Maybe Timothy Dexter was a real life version of such:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Dexter

 

what part of i'm not an expert don't you understand? i know it isn't septillions to one though and as the sciam article says why. i have also explained other factors you need to supply before any attempt at an answer can be given. do you care to supply those now?

 

anyway MR you are the one making these claims and supplying dubious links to back them all i am doing is saying i don't believe stats work the way you think.