What are the odds??? VERSUS Actual experience

[john]

Well..    Number of rounds is not important in this unless you have
information about what round of the contest the crash occurred. Nor is
the number of years over which the experience is spread unless the
contests are still the same as 25 years ago, the numbers could be off
because of the long duration.
 
100 contests x 25 contestants = 2500 opportunities, 2 midairs = 4
airplanes (pilots) involved = 4 in 2500 or 1 in 625.
 
I think that is a little low. It really depends on what the flight
schedule is. Masters/FAI pilots tend to be more consistent in their
flights, staying at a fixed distance from the flight line. That would
tend to increase the number of midairs at contests with enough Masters
or FAI pilots to have them at both flight lines at the same time. And in
fact the 1 midair I have witnessed at a contest happened while both
lines were flying Masters.
 
By the way, that is 1 midair in 8 contests, about 25 average pilots for
a much worse 1 in 100 chance.
 
John Petterson
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: discussion-request at nsrca.org [mailto:discussion-request at nsrca.org]
On Behalf Of Rcmaster199 at aol.com
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2003 12:09 AM
To: discussion at nsrca.org
Subject: Re: What are the odds??? VERSUS Actual experience
 
David,

I am looking at it from my point of view only: 100 contests 
give or take in 24 years, 25 contestants average each contest, 4 1/2
rounds average each contest, 2 mid airs. Per my experience, that's about
1 in 2500 tries, but it isn't probable. It's fact ;-)

regards

Matt





Oops, correction:  The odds of you having a mid-air at a pattern contest
may be 1 in 56, not 1 in 560.  The odds of any contestant of having a
mid-air is 10 in 56, given the assumption that there are 56 pattern
contests each year in North America, and an average of 10 mid-airs per
year.    

<<
A more interesting question to me is, how offten do pattern planes
collide at contests?  I can control mid-airs outside of contests, but we
are all subject to the odds of a mid air if we participate in a contest.
Let's say there are 10 mid-airs out of all the 8 NSRCA districts each
year.    And lets say there are 7 contests per district on average.
Then that is 56 contests.  Then the odds of having one mid air in a
contest is 1 in 56.  Now if there are 20 pilots average per contest,
then your chance of mid-air is 1/(56 * 10) = one chance in 560 contest
attendances (I think). 



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