Cedre, you are confusing two different statistics. On any given day, there is a 1 in 3 chance of an aviation accident. On any given day, a specific individual has a 1 in 25 million chance of being in an aviation accident. Why are these different statistics?
The first deals with how often an aviation accident occurs. Based on given data, we can expect an aviation accident to occur every 3 days. This does not translate to whether or not a specific individual will be involved in the accident. This statistic has little to do with the odds of an individual being involved in an accident, just that an accident will occur every 3 days.
The second deals with the individual and the chances for that individual being involved in an accident. The actual statistic is actually a bit higher on being involved in an aviation accident with at least one fatality, 1 in 9 million, according to this
site, but the odds refer to an individual's chances.
This
chart from the National Transportation Safety Board, I think, best represents the scale of accidents in a given year for US aviation alone. As you can see, the total number of accidents is never less than 1500 from 1989-2008. During this same period, the number of fatal accidents in any given year is never less than 200. That means we can expect a fatal aviation accident every 1.8 days and any kind of accident every quarter of a day anywhere in the world. These statistics include multiple types of airplanes, except, as I can see, military.
You look at an individual's odds at being involved in a fatal accident. However, looking at odds isn't enough, you need to look at the aggregate numbers. There were
29.6 million flights for the year 2007 and that's just for airlines and doesn't include private aircraft, business aircraft, training aircraft, etc. For the US alone, in 2007, there were 288 fatal accidents and 1650 total accidents. That means only 0.00000097 of flights resulted in a fatal accident. But the number is still 288 fatal accidents for 365 days, which still means 1 fatal accident every 1.27 days or, using total number of accidents, 4.5 accidents per day.
Understand? You are right in saying that an aviation accident is rare. But rare or not, just by the sheer number of flights that occur and the sheer number of flight hours around the world, accidents are bound to happen. It is similar to 10 million people each buying 1 lottery ticket in order to win a lottery in which a person has a 1 in 5 million chance of winning. Two people are probably going to win simply because there are enough tickets to cover the odds, twice. Even though the chances of an aviation accident is rare, and a fatal accident is rarer still, the sheer number of flights and flight hours ensures that it will occur and occur many times.
So TB Joshua predicting an aviation accident for three given days, in which he apparently includes nonfatal accidents, is unimpressive. I could make a similar prediction and be right since it would happen eventually simply because the numbers are in my favor (that is, I can expect 4 aviation accidents per day).
Edited by Izanagi, : No reason given.
Edited by Izanagi, : No reason given.
Edited by Izanagi, : No reason given.
Edited by Izanagi, : No reason given.