Originally Posted by
Tiglath
Funny how you edited what I said to fit your purpose -- such shameless loading of the dice.
I clearly considered THREE outcomes. (1) Helmet + no-head-injury, (2) No-helmet + lethal-head-injury, (3) No-helmet + serious-head-injury.
In outcome (3) I even enumerated some of the typical treatment, cost unspecified but probably gigantic.
Your handling or probability is also hilarious. Statistics merely recount what happened to a population, and the same never happens again, though maybe an approximation, who knows. Most importantly, statistics do not determine in the slightest what happens to particular individuals.
Outcome (1) benefits helmet makers indeed, but you only need the helmet to save your head once, and it's YOU who makes out like a bandit. I know, I am one.
I did not edit - I just addressed the first of two scenarios that you brought up.
The second situation is similar, but slightly more complex. It has the same final conclusion however.
My handling of probability, though it was the simplest case, was correct. You are evidently operating under a mistaken impression about probability and statistics. Both are absolutely applicable to an individual and to individual events. I'm not going to argue about it, just give you the facts.
You have mentioned twice that you do not care for statistics and you do not believe that probability is meaningful. I suspect that you just don't understand it very well. I do understand it, so let's knock off the snarky value judgments about math here, OK?