Don't Panic in Large Friendly Letters

My grandfather manually set the insurance rates in Augusta many years ago, and my father and uncle are still in the insurance business, so I'm probably more interested in risk than most people. So I can't believe that I'm nearly two years late in finding this five page article from an OSU professor concerning the risk of terrorism. (Thanks to boingboing for the link, btw.)

Just the other night I saw an intro for a new program asking the question of whether we're more safe now than we were just after 9/11. I'm sick and tired of stories like that which play to our fears. The fact you're more likely to be struck by lightening or killed by a deer than to be directly impacted by terrorism should give us some comfort, but it doesn't seem to. Of course, fears are irrational, and few people really know how to assess risk. It's a very common fallicy to overestimate the probability of those things which we consider to be terrible and to underestimate the probability of those things which we do not consider as bad. For example, if I were to advertise that I have a rifle in a place where my kids could possibly get to it, I would be called a terrible parent. However, no one blinks twice when I take my children to the local pool, regardless of the fact that the chances of a child dying from drowning are much, much greater than of him dying from a bullet.

As many analysts have pointed out, the point of terrorism is not to kill people but to inspire fear in them. The more we change our way of life as a result of their despictable acts, the more they have won. I've known this for a while, but it's good to have someone more qualified than me actually do the math to prove it.