On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:43:47 -0600, Ralph Jones
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:05:23 -0400, Ari
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:14:35 -0700 (PDT), Hellman wrote:

What could soaring possibly have in common with nuclear weapons? To
find out, read my new article "Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear
Weapons" at

http://www.nuclearrisk.org/soaring_article.php

"On an annual basis, that makes relying on nuclear weapons a 99% safe
maneuver. As with 99.9% safe maneuvers in soaring, that is not as safe
as it sounds and is no cause for complacency. If we continue to rely on
a strategy with a one percent failure rate per year, that adds up to
about 10% in a decade and almost certain destruction within my
grandchildren's lifetimes."

Your math is off, risk is not cumulative.

His math is quite precise for a one-decade interval: the probability
of getting through 10 years with a 99% success rate per year is
0.99^10 = 0.904 or slightly less than a 10% likelihood of disaster.

If his children have a life expectancy of 9o years, the probability of
their encountering failure is 0.99^90 = 0.405, so substitute "60%
likely" for "almost certain".

rj

Sorry, typo, that should read "not encountering failure".

rj