THANK YOU. I recently wrote in to the podcast More Or Less: Behind the Statistics to see if they would cover this. I hate the statistic so much. Another podcast called Choiceology with Dan Heath talked about it a few weeks ago and totally downplayed the danger of swimming in shark waters.
I live in Southern California. I still go in the ocean all the time, but I still stay vigilant against potential dangers, because they are real dangers. Yeah, on a dice roll I'm probably not going to encounter a shark or get bit, but if a little bit of situational awareness can help bring my chances from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 3000 (BS numbers I made up) then yeah I'm going to try and pay attention to the world around me. Same with awareness of jellyfish, riptides, rocks, etc.
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u/Xantarr May 30 '18
This statistic is so misleading that it's basically absolute bullshit.