Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Latest Cavalcade of Risk Is Up!

The latest Cavalcade of Risk is up at Jason Shafrin's Healthcare Economist.  As usual, the contributing writer-bloggers have done an outstanding job of examining the latest thinking surrounding the art and science of business and insurance risk.

Jason has an additional insight to share:

According to FindMyMarathon.com, in 2012, there were 658 marathons in the U.S. and Canada.  Thus, the probability of a bombing of a randomly selected marathon in the U.S. or Canada is about 0.2% if one assumes one bombing per year.

The Chicago Tribune reports that 100 people were injured and 3 people died.  In 2012, 528,375 individuals finished a marathon.  Thus, the probability of being injured at a marathon due to a bombing is 0.02% and the probability of being killed is 0.0006% or fewer than 1 in every 150,000 individuals.

About 1 in 100,000 marathon finishers die during or in the 24 hours immediately after a marathon, according to The New York Times.  Thus, marathoners are at higher risk of dying of a heart attack after a marathon than from a terrorist attack. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The odds are even less, as most injured and all killed were not runners. One would have add spectators to the denominator in order to calculate the odds of marathon injuries due to causes other than actual running.