

What If My Kid…? (A Guide To Odds) - apsec112
http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/06/04/what-if-my-kid-a-guide-to-odds/

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B-Con
I did some spot checking. In general, the odds seem lowish. Some are
surprisingly reasonable, some seem absurd. I would've liked to see sources.

Below I assume a U.S. population of 300 - 310 million (rounding as
convenient).

> Goes to law school: 1 in 80

That's about 3 million people.

It's vague wording. Does it mean going to graduate law school? Being accepted?
Or does it just mean have a declared major of law at some point? I can accept
the latter, as ambitious / high-earning jobs generally have an over-abundance
of declared majors by freshmen/sophomores (who change their major every
semester). But I don't think that many people actually get into graduate law
school, or else they would rival business majors (the most popular major).

> Works as a Google engineer: 1 in 2,500

That means Google has employed 124,000 engineers over it's modest 14 years.
Currently they only employee 33,000 (according to Wikipedia), and I can't
imagine more than 1/3 of those being engineers (consider marketing, finance,
managers, maintenance staff, sales, support, etc). And they only really grew
in size in the past 8 or 9 years. They'd have to have always had over 2/3 of
their staff as engineers and be turning over an entire fresh set of employees
_every year_ to have a chance at making those odds.

> Plays in the NFL: 1 in 15,000

At first I thought this sounded low, but not necessarily: This would mean we
have about 21,000 NFL players, past or present. There are 32 teams and I
counted 91 players on the Giants' roster (seriously, 91!?), so that estimates
to about 3,000 players active. That means we have a full 7 independent
generations worth of NFL players alive. Considering that a _lot_ of players
only play for a year or two and that even those with long careers usually
retire by 40, this actually seems reasonable.

> CEO of Fortune 500 company: 1 in 60,000

There are 500 companies on the list, and year-to-year most of them stay the
same. That means we have 5,000 present or past such CEOs in our country. No
more than 500 can be active at any time, so we have a full 10 sets of CEOs
alive. From a survey (<http://www.forbes.com/2003/03/31/cx_wt_0401exec.html>)
of the top 100 companies, it looks like the the average time spent as CEO is
only 3 or 4 years and the average age achieved is 50. Assuming a lifespan of
80, that checks out even if the vast majority of the Fortune 500 list remains
static.

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raldi
I'd like to see some negative scenarios mixed into that list:

* Gets kidnapped

* Gets struck by lightning

* Is a victim of a terrorist act

* Dies in a plane crash

* Dies in a car accident

It would help illustrate how we spend so much time worrying about such
infinitesimally unlikely nightmares.

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brey
these numbers are not all comparable.

1/30 chance of being gay means there's a genetic dice being thrown (as far as
we understand).

a 1/2500 'chance' of working for google does not have the same degree of
randomness. not everyone in the US applied to work for google. on the same
rationale, pick a random convenience store with three employees - you have a 1
/ 100 million 'chance' of working there.

it's like being surprised at any given bridge hand because the chance you were
dealt that particular one is one in a trillion. you have to get -some- bridge
hand. people generally work -somewhere-. the numbers are meaningless without
prior selection.

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rmk2
Am I the only one who was expecting an article about the likelihood of
congenital disorders and/or genetics here?

It's still a good article, mind you, I guess I was just hoping it wouldn't
just be about "success" and "money", but rather about the most fundamental
worry, i.e. "What if my kid gets or has X...?"

Then again, this seems more in line with the usual HN topics... ;)

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apsec112
Good comment - I'm actually planning another article on the topic you suggest.
I'll call it "A Guide to Risks", should be out in a week or so.

~~~
rmk2
Lovely, I'll be looking forward to that! :)

I really like how you divided it up so one actually gets an understanding of
the magnitude and what "1 in x" can be likened to.

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supernooneo
1 in 11 chance of being a millionaire? That must be far too high? Then there
would be 31 million millionaires in the country, or about the population of
California.

Edit: and then he says 1 in 120 of earning $400k or more... so that does that
work with 1 in 11 being a millionaire?

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bcherry
According to the WSJ[1], there were 3.1 millionaires in the US in 2010. I'm
not sure what he means by "in a random year", but perhaps it means that 1/11
people become a millionaire at some point in their life (even if they don't
stay one for long)? Or, he's off by a factor of ten (the coincidence of 3.1MM
vs 31MM is hard to discount).

Becoming a millionaire doesn't require an annual income of $400k/yr. Most
millionaires probably make far less, (150-250k?), and become millionaires from
savings over many years.

[1]: [http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/22/u-s-has-record-
number...](http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/22/u-s-has-record-number-of-
millionaires/)

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ChuckMcM
_"Merrill and Capgemini define millionaires as individuals with $1 million or
more in investible assets, not including primary home, collectibles,
consumables and consumer durables."_

So not including your home, or things you can sell like your car, or
collectible ginsu knife set. I guess they do include your self managed IRA
though, since that is 'investible.'

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drpgq
Wasn't there something recently in the news about the majority of children
being born in the US being minorities soon? I take it that's not what he
means, but if you were born today, there would be a lot higher odds than 1 in
3.5 of being non-white.

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westicle
If the majority of children being born are minorities, then logically all
children being born are minorities.

Mind bending!

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kyt
I think people want to know conditional probabilities. eg. P(My child
graduates college|I have engineering degree from Stanford). I assume most
children of HN readers have a greater than 33% chance of graduating college.

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cdcarter
I'm more of a minority in terms of my SAT score than my identity as
homosexual. That's oddly striking.

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dice
Can you imagine WBC protesters with "God hates smart people" signs?

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bawllz
Born gay? That's quite the can of worms you just cracked there...

