[SGVLUG] Re: [going off-topic] Lightning strikes (was How does [linux trademark] affect user groups)

[David Lawyer]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 01:57:43AM -0700, Tom Emerson wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 August 2005 8:22 pm, Dustin wrote:
> > <pedantry>
> >
> > To start with,
> >
> > http://www.struckbylightning.org/news/dispIncidentdb.cfm lists over thirty
> > people struck by lightning worldwide in the last week,
> 
> Ahh, but there is a rather skewed data point -- 19 soldiers are included as 
> one "incident" -- most other items listed are one or two people, on up to 

> 
David Lawyer wrote:
> > > I think the danger of a
> > > lawsuit from LMI is less than that of being struck by lightening on
> > > the way to a LUG meeting.
 
On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 08:22:37PM -0700, Dustin wrote:
> <pedantry>
> 
> To start with,
> 
> http://www.struckbylightning.org/news/dispIncidentdb.cfm lists over thirty
> people struck by lightning worldwide in the last week, so the crudest
> estimate (based on that data point) would be that the rate is of the order
> of magnitude of 4/day.

In view of Tom's comment, let's make that 3/day (out of 6 billion
people in the world).  One chance in 2 billion.  But given a lug
member is struck by lightning on the day of a meeting.  What's the
probability that this happened on the way to the meeting and not at
some other time?  If I go hiking along a high ridge in the mountains
during thunder showers prior to the meeting, then there's about one
chance in a thousand I'll be hit.  So other activities may be millions
of times more risky than driving to a lug meeting.  So let's say that
given you are hit by lightning on a meeting day, there's only a 10%
chance it was on the way to the meeting.  Now the odds are one in 20
billion.  Also, I think lightning deaths are less common in S. Calif.
than the rest of the world, partly because we spend less time outdoors
when it rains.  So change the odds to one in 30 billion.  I've tried
to be conservative.  It might actually be 10 in a trillion.  Now if your
life expectancy is 30 years, and the probability of dying each day is
the same (of course it's not), then there's about 1 chance in 10
thousand of dying each day.  That's 10 million times greater than being
hit by lightning on the way to a meeting.

> Just to skew the statistics conservatively to make my point, suppose
> the average LUG has around 32 people (32 is a nice round number to
> me) and it is people affected, not incidents, that count.  That's
> still a LUG full of people hit by lightning each week.

???? non sequitur
While it's true that a lawsuit against sgvlug would affect more
people, it has no effect on the odds.

> Then unless the LMI is threating on average one LUG a week
> worldwide, the odds of getting hit by lightning are *far* greater
> than that of LMI bothering us.  I kind of doubt they've ever done it
> anyway, but anyone want to try to argue they do it that often? :-)

> </pedantry>
			David Lawyer