Everyone wants data. So, here’s some data and perspective that derives from that data.

We all go through life dreaming of winning the lottery. We all go through life hoping to never be the victim of a violent crime.

We like to think being the victim of a violent crime is “a one in a million” chance of happening. Now, I don’t think anyone actually believes it is truly 1:1,000,000 chance; rather, it’s being used as an expression to say it’s a very remote possibility it will ever happen to me.

Let’s look at numbers.

The FBI maintains this nifty database called the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. As of this writing, the latest data is from 2010. Let’s see what the UCR reports regarding violent crime (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) across the US in 2010.

I generated the table and saved it as a screenshot because it was the easiest way to get it here into the post. Let’s extract and look at the summary numbers.

In 2010, there were 308 million people living in the US, and there were 1.25 million violent crimes reported.

So what was the crime rate? There were 403.6 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Or about 1 in 247.

Really though, it’s lower. Consider there’s a number of folks in the population that are extremely unlikely to be either the perpetrator or victim of violence, like infants, the infirm, etc.. So really, chances are what? 1 in 200? Maybe even less? Really hard to say. Plus, this is only reported violent crime. There are crimes that go unreported (especially rape), so you can be sure the actual number of violent crimes committed is much higher. So simple math says if we’re calculating with less population and more crime incidents, the ratio gets smaller. We’ll have to base upon 1:247 since that’s the best number we can calculate, but keep in mind the ratio is likely smaller.

Let’s put this in perspective. I found this article from 2007’s NY Times that contained numerous ways to die and the chances of dying from them. The data apparently comes from the National Safety Council and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Heart disease – 1 in 5
• Cancer – 1 in 7
• Stroke – 1 in 24
• Car accident – 1 in 84
• Accidental Poisoning – 1 in 193
• Falls – 1 in 218
• Drowning – 1 in 1,134
• Air/space accident – 1 in 5,051
• Sun/Heat exposure – 1 in 13,729
• Lightning – 1 in 79,746
• Fireworks – 1 in 340,733
• and my favorite —- worldwide, 62 people died from shark attacks, but 150 died from falling coconuts.

This infographic from PopSci.com gives some other interesting chances:

• Chance of getting cancer – 1 in 2 (the above seems to be dying from, vs. this just getting it)
• Being selected on The Price is Right – 1 in 36 (but you have to be in the studio audience)
• IRS audit – 1 in 175
• Getting injured and dying in the next year – 1 in 1820
• Going blind after laser eye surgery – 1 in 85,714
• Dying in an airplane accident – 1 in 354,319
• Being struck by lightning – 1 in 700,00 (again, this is struck, the above is dying from)
• Winning $1000 in McDonald’s Monopoly game – 1 in 36,950,005
• Winning Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot – 1 in 49,836,032
• Winning Mega Millions – 1 in 135,145,920

Given this data, it seems we should primarily care about our general well-being: eat right, exercise, mind your sun exposure, etc.. We should also keep our taxes in order.

When you put the UCR number in there, it’s really not too remote a possibility to be a victim of a violent crime.

Think about this.

More people on a daily and weekly basis put more effort into playing the lottery than they do keeping themselves healthy and well. Whether it’s eating right and exercising, or it’s having a ready-means of defending themselves against violent crime, people put far more effort into something that has almost no chance of happening than effort into something quite likely to happen.

Does that make sense?

We could also make the case for something like abolishing the TSA, where we put 2-tons of effort and billions of dollars into an unlikely event, but the .gov works hard at keeping the citizenry from being able to address things they are far more likely to die from on a daily basis! But that’s another topic for another time.

Certainly make your own value judgment here about what’s important to you and how you wish to utilize this data. I just think it’s important to look at the general chances of various things happening, and take it as some perspective and reality. You’re far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than you are to win the lottery; it’s far from a “one in a million” chance. I mean, winning the lottery technically would make you the statistical anomaly, and how cool would it be to beat the odds, right? Well, even if being the victim of a violent crime was a “one in a million” chance, you still accepted that it might happen, and you have to admit it would really suck to be the one that beat the odds.