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NewJazzyesterday at 10:46 PM1 replyview on HN

Uh, the miles driven is like rolling the die, not hitting kids.


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smarnachyesterday at 11:04 PM

Sure, but we shouldn't stretch the analogy too far. Die rolls are discrete events, while miles driven are continuous. We expect the number of sixes we get to follow a binomial distribution, while we expect the number of accidents to follow a Poisson distribution. Either way, trying to guess the mean value of the distribution after a single incident of the event will never give you a statistically meaningful lower bound, only an upper bound.

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