It always amazes me the bizarre skew that people have when dealing with statistics.
Roger’s rule of inverse headlines: The rarer the event, the more you’ll hear about it.
Take airplane crashes: Very rare, in the US we loose a couple hundred people a year, but it’s always front page headlines, sometimes for days.
Car crashes; in the US we loose over 25,000 people a year. Mostly page two or three news or more likely in the “Metro” section.
Before I go any further, realize that I’m not downplaying anyone’s death, it’s tragic. But we make risk/benefit decisions every day. Like getting in a car, the most likely place for any one of us to die by accident.
Just because something’s improved, does not make its predecessor “dangerous”. If a car manufacturer improves its seatbelts, it does not make the previous year’s model a deathtrap.
Aspirin and other NSAIDs cause over 7,000 deaths in the US every year (http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/6/429) – who’s going to now head to their medicine cabinet and throw out their aspirin?
So let’s look at 6351 and 6061. Well, so far 6061 looks like a better material, but we don’t have the “run time” on the alloy that we have on 6061. Perhaps in ten more years some failure mode will show up with 6061 too. Time will tell.
But is 6351 dangerous? Again, just because 6061 may be better doesn’t make 6351 bad.
With close to 4 million 6351 alloy cylinders in use there have been less than two dozen well publicized failures of 6351. Roger’s rule of inverse headlines comes in here (though in this case it’s how much you hear about it on the internet). Failures are rare. Very rare. Extremely rare.
If you feel the amount of deaths from 6351 justifies the removal of the cylinders from service, let’s look at one more statistic:
About 100 people A YEAR die SCUBA diving. If you really want to be safer, give that up BEFORE you start looking at 6351 as a risk factor. And if you’re a smoker, don’t even bother to complain about 6351. Eventually you’ll be one of the over 400,000 people in the US that die from tobacco use every year in the US.
Again, any death is tragic. But if you’re really serious about saving your life or someone else’s life (like the tank filler at your LDS) you really need to look at what will statistically save the most lives per dollar spent. And in the tank filler’s case, you’d get more bang for your buck through properly training tank inspectors than blaming 6351 for the problems we’re seeing.
Roak
Roger’s rule of inverse headlines: The rarer the event, the more you’ll hear about it.
Take airplane crashes: Very rare, in the US we loose a couple hundred people a year, but it’s always front page headlines, sometimes for days.
Car crashes; in the US we loose over 25,000 people a year. Mostly page two or three news or more likely in the “Metro” section.
Before I go any further, realize that I’m not downplaying anyone’s death, it’s tragic. But we make risk/benefit decisions every day. Like getting in a car, the most likely place for any one of us to die by accident.
Just because something’s improved, does not make its predecessor “dangerous”. If a car manufacturer improves its seatbelts, it does not make the previous year’s model a deathtrap.
Aspirin and other NSAIDs cause over 7,000 deaths in the US every year (http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/6/429) – who’s going to now head to their medicine cabinet and throw out their aspirin?
So let’s look at 6351 and 6061. Well, so far 6061 looks like a better material, but we don’t have the “run time” on the alloy that we have on 6061. Perhaps in ten more years some failure mode will show up with 6061 too. Time will tell.
But is 6351 dangerous? Again, just because 6061 may be better doesn’t make 6351 bad.
With close to 4 million 6351 alloy cylinders in use there have been less than two dozen well publicized failures of 6351. Roger’s rule of inverse headlines comes in here (though in this case it’s how much you hear about it on the internet). Failures are rare. Very rare. Extremely rare.
If you feel the amount of deaths from 6351 justifies the removal of the cylinders from service, let’s look at one more statistic:
About 100 people A YEAR die SCUBA diving. If you really want to be safer, give that up BEFORE you start looking at 6351 as a risk factor. And if you’re a smoker, don’t even bother to complain about 6351. Eventually you’ll be one of the over 400,000 people in the US that die from tobacco use every year in the US.
Again, any death is tragic. But if you’re really serious about saving your life or someone else’s life (like the tank filler at your LDS) you really need to look at what will statistically save the most lives per dollar spent. And in the tank filler’s case, you’d get more bang for your buck through properly training tank inspectors than blaming 6351 for the problems we’re seeing.
Roak
