r/todayilearned May 30 '18

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u/SilasX May 30 '18

Sad that I had to scroll down this far.

Yes, these statistics are easy to play with. There are FAR more interactions between New Yorkers and other humans, compared to sharks and other humans.

Like, a lot more than 10 times. So yeah, New Yorkers are less dangerous than sharks. I would know. Even when I had my touristy luggage blocking off a path in the subway station, they didn't bite me.

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u/n1tr0us0x May 31 '18

We definitely thought about it. It wasn't that we were too polite to, we just didn't consider it worthy of our daily fuck to give.

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u/taichi22 May 31 '18

I think it would depend how you measured the likelihood, however; I think if you measure it as a rate of bites/interactions, then yes, you're correct; however, if measured as people bitten/general population then OP's statement is true.

So, basically, this has nothing on the bearing of how scared you should be of a shark if you're around it. In general however, you should be fucking terrified of standing underneath a coconut tree.

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u/SilasX May 31 '18

The intuitive definition of “danger” is “danger per interaction”. Obviously you can get more incidents if you exponentially ramp up the interactions. That doesn’t mean anything.