Just after I completed my last post on risk quantification, I happened to be reading my latest issue of Forbes Magazine (10/17/05) and found a chart under the heading "What’s Riskier Than Bioterrorism?" that portrays the probability of dying this year (my emphasis) for various reasons. Some listings:

• Heart disease (1:322)
• Cancer (1:524)
• Motor Vehicle Accident (1:6,579)
• Homicide (1:16,949)
• Lightning (1:4,478,159)
• Bioterrorism (1:56,424,800)

As I mentioned, it is common to ignore the denominator, which I presume is total deaths. I would rather know how many people die of Flu and pneumonia out of all those who get it rather than the number of deaths by Flu over the total number of deaths (1:4,484).

(Data from Center for Disease Control & Prevention; Harvard Center for Risk Analysis)