by arb99 on 7/25/14, 2:13 PM with 83 comments
by gleenn on 7/25/14, 2:32 PM
I'm also happy to see some at least slightly non-trivial statistics in the mainstream.
One glaring point though: the liklihood of another crash might not be high given whatever statistics, but those don't reflect the fact that someone shot a missile at one of those planes. I might risk a flight in Africa or Taiwan or where-ever, but you won't see me flying anywhere near Russia/Ukraine anytime soon even though people obviously thought this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
by josephpmay on 7/25/14, 2:24 PM
http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what-does-randomness-look-like/
by jameshart on 7/25/14, 2:47 PM
by mxfh on 7/25/14, 2:54 PM
Time-evolving distribution of time lags between commercial airline disasters[1]
while others disagree:
In the case of plane accidents, the authors of Ref. 7[1] found that the time lag between commercial airline disasters and their occurrence frequency could be well described by time-dependent Poisson events. On the other hand, authors of Ref. 8[3] have found that beyond certain timescales the time dynamics of both plane and car accidents are not Poissonian but instead long-range correlated.[2]
[1]http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509092
[2]http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3183
[3]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437107...
by mikeash on 7/25/14, 2:48 PM
I don't think this affects the probability discussion much, but it's good to call it what it is.
by philh on 7/25/14, 3:36 PM
As written, a poisson distribution wouldn't explain this. If you have a crash on day 0, then a crash on day 1 is no more likely than a crash on days 2, 3, etc.
Day 1 is the day most likely to have the next crash, but it's no more likely to have any crash.
(It could easily be the case that Ranter actually found "...just one day after the previous crash than two, three or more days later", and this subtlety got lost somewhere down the line.)
by low_key on 7/25/14, 3:24 PM
This is even more true when missiles are involved.
by Coincoin on 7/25/14, 7:04 PM
by platz on 7/25/14, 3:40 PM
Why is a crash on 3 August dependent on there being no crash on 2 August? Surely there could be crashes on both 2 August and 3 August.
by clueless123 on 7/25/14, 3:59 PM
by lifeisstillgood on 7/25/14, 5:56 PM
Minimum standards are high - and well respected. But if you shave off costs - even if each one is trivial - put back investment, dial back on the training, will I have a cumulative effect?
In short, when will air travel trend towards rail and road for accidents ?
by calinet6 on 7/25/14, 5:15 PM
Now here's a scary question: when you want to give someone a bonus because of their successful performance over the last 6 months, how likely is it that their string success is a coincidence?
You're forced to make a similar conclusion, and if you don't, think about why you have the bias you do.
by spacefight on 7/25/14, 3:28 PM
- MH 17 http://www.aeroinside.com/item/4365/malaysia-b772-near-donet...
- Transasia in Taiwan http://www.aeroinside.com/item/4389/transasia-at72-at-makung...
- Swiftair MD 83 in Africa http://www.aeroinside.com/item/4393/swiftair-md83-over-mali-...
by ermintrude on 7/25/14, 3:48 PM
Obviously a civilian plane being shot down would lie outside this theory (he suggested more plane crashes were due to pilot depression than mechanical fault/other factors).
by billmalarky on 7/25/14, 2:44 PM
So if another crash occurs are we allowed start the conspiracy theories?
by bitL on 7/25/14, 3:10 PM
by jdcryans on 7/26/14, 3:42 AM
by tpeng on 7/25/14, 4:30 PM
https://fc.deltasd.bc.ca/~dmatthews/FOV2-00074762/S02DB0598....
by ackfoo on 7/25/14, 5:48 PM
If we postulate that, now absent the selection pressures that have shaped human intelligence over the last few million years or so, human intelligence is likely to decline, then we can ask ourselves where this decline might be likely to first show up in the chaotic system of human endeavour.
One possible answer is that it will appear first at the boundary layers: the places where a critical level of human intelligence is required to keep a complicated task operating.
I propose that flying passenger aircraft is such a task. A critical level of intelligence must be maintained by a very large number of people in order to keep passenger aircraft in the air. Everyone, from designers to manufacturers, to QC, to maintenance to pilots to airline management has to function above a certain critical level to perpetuate the activity.
It is possible that clusters of aircraft accidents are purely random and part of the complex system that is air travel. However, it is possible that clusters of aviation accidents represent crossings of the boundary layer resulting from the change in a global factor, like human intelligence, that has moved the entire system probabilistically.
The details of some recent accidents should give us pause. The series of over-control/mis-control accidents including AF447, Colgan Air and others defy reasonable explanation, and they appear to have no precedent in recent passenger aviation. MH370 and MH17, so far as we can see, have no reasonable explanation other than unaccountable human behaviour (failing to communicate over the course of seven hours flying in the case of MH370, and navigating over a war zone in the case of MH17).
It is possible, although certainly not provable at this point, that we are simply becoming too stupid (in general) to fly passenger aircraft safely. It may be time to switch to fully automated aircraft systems.