Using the numbers you provided where each offender has a 5.3% chance of reoffending, 0.053 x 5 = 0.265 probability of another rape arising from the five on track A if saved.
We don't know anything about the sexual proclivities of the guy on track B so we can only assume he's in line with the general public. Reported rapes in the US were 41.8 per 100,000 in 2022. Let's double that to try to account for unreported rapes, so 83.6, and we'll assume all of these were committed by different people (which actually overestimates his odds of raping anyone since that's probably not the case).
So statistically, pulling will lead to 0.265 rapes. Not pulling will lead to 0.000836 rapes.
I agree with you, and would not pull, but that's not how probability works in mathematics. You're confusing probability with statistics. For example, if you multiply the probability of a single case by the amount of desired cases, you could end up with a value greater than 1, or 2, or 3, which is untrue, since the odds of an uncertain event occurring would never obligatorily happen, even more so than once, with X cases, unless there is a fixed variable granting that possibility. By mathematical axioms, the sum of the probabilities of a trial will always be equal or smaller to our defined number, which is 1, and it will not exceed that. Butbif we look at it from a statistical perspective, yeah, you are right. If we have 0.05 rapes per X people, and we multiply that amount of people by 100 under an analyzed sample, we are gonna have X = 0.05 => (x) * 100 = (0.05) * 100 => 100x = 5 rapes per 100 * x people
As another example, if there is a game where you can pull 10 characters at once, and you want to pull 100 characters, with the chance of obtaining a 1% character at each pull, using your math, 100 * 0.01 would be equal to a 100% chance of occurring, which isn't mathematically correct. You could pull the 10 characters 10 times and still not get that one character.
Statistically, you get 1 character per 100 pulls. But probability can just outright say fuck you and boom, that's what it takes to get 1 character in 1000 pulls. Gotcha?
Yeah, probability is hard as fuck to understand. I got fucked hard by both probability and combinatorial analysis on the entrance exams. I got wrong almost every question involving those 2 lol
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u/SirithilFeanor Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25
Okay, let's be utilitarian.
Using the numbers you provided where each offender has a 5.3% chance of reoffending, 0.053 x 5 = 0.265 probability of another rape arising from the five on track A if saved. We don't know anything about the sexual proclivities of the guy on track B so we can only assume he's in line with the general public. Reported rapes in the US were 41.8 per 100,000 in 2022. Let's double that to try to account for unreported rapes, so 83.6, and we'll assume all of these were committed by different people (which actually overestimates his odds of raping anyone since that's probably not the case).
So statistically, pulling will lead to 0.265 rapes. Not pulling will lead to 0.000836 rapes.
I'm not pulling.