Statistics
Top: World map showing relative frequency of lightning strikes. Bottom: US map showing location of Virginia, which has a relatively high lightning rate.The odds of being struck by lightning for a person over the period of 80 years have been roughly estimated as 1:10000. If the lightning strikes were independent events, the probability of being hit seven times would be 1:100007. These numbers do not quite apply to Sullivan, however, who by the nature of his work was more exposed to storms than the average person. Virginia, where he lived, averages 35 to 45 thunderstorm days per year, most of which fall in June, July, and August. Between 1959 and 2000 lightning killed 58 people and injured at least 238 people in Virginia. In the United States, 3239 people were killed and 13,057 injured by lightning in the same period. Most of those were males between 20 and 40 years old caught outdoors.
Read more about this topic: Roy Sullivan
Famous quotes containing the word statistics:
“Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about “character issues.” Either that or just go ahead and determine the presidency with three-legged races and pie-eating contests. It would make better TV.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination.”
—Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
“We ask for no statistics of the killed,
For nothing political impinges on
This single casualty, or all those gone,
Missing or healing, sinking or dispersed,
Hundreds of thousands counted, millions lost.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)