I’ve always said that 72.3% of all statistics mentioned in casual conversation are inaccurate. I’ve also always felt that paying attention to statistics is silly, because in spite of all the sophisticated math, there’s no way to tell when and where that 1 in 10 million chance of being attacked by a shark will occur. For instance, In 1985 NASA estimated that the probability of an accident occurring with the space shuttle was 1 in 100,000. But the 25th shuttle launch exploded after take-off, and the 113rd mission exploded on re-entry. Does that mean the next 198,998 missions will be accident-free? I just wasted an hour of my life at NationMaster.com, which has an amazing array of facts and statistics, and cross-references them in a way that I’d say creates a 33.3% chance that you’ll spend at least ten minutes on the site. Like, did you know that Russia has almost twice as many judges and magistrates as the United States, while the United States has 8 times as much crime? Or that America has the most McDonalds restaurants per capita, AND the highest number of obesity-related deaths? Coincidence? You decide. The NSC has some dry but interesting stats too. It’s hard to sort them out usefully though. We all know that flying is statistically safer than driving, but they combine air and space transport accidents, and split vehicles into many categories. Is your Subaru a car or an off-road vehicle? It was still somehow informative to find that my chances of getting injured with furniture were twice that of falling down the stairs, or that I have a 1 in 103,004 of dying from a “foreign body entering through skin or natural orifice”. If you’re into watching statistics in general, you might also find it interesting to watch real-time births, deaths, and more on the WorldClock. It’s almost creepy thinking of the actual births and deaths occurring as you watch the numbers turn. And finally, though I’d love to hear about similar resources or interesting figures, I’m going to suggest that there’s less than a 1 in 30,000 chance that you’ll share a comment this month, based on our site traffic logs.