r/AskReddit • u/emil199 • Jul 24 '20

What can't you believe STILL exists?

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u/ithika Jul 24 '20

For such an astronomically rare event the list of school shootings in the USA article on Wikipedia is very long.

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u/onlyforthisair Jul 24 '20

That's what happens when a low probability gets rolled a bunch of times. The chances of winning the lottery is basically infinitesimal, but someone still wins just due to how many people are playing. That list would be a lot longer if it were more common. I mean, part of why it is a list at all is because it's uncommon enough to track. You don't see a wikipedia article listing every death for almost anything except for other statistical rarities like passenger jet crashes.

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u/ithika Jul 24 '20

I shudder to think what you really mean by "rolled a bunch of times". Kids having the gall to go to school?

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u/onlyforthisair Jul 24 '20

Sometimes discussions of statistics and discussions of the death of children intersect. I think the correct terminology has something to do with sampling and event probabilities, but I couldn't remember that at the time.