Do my chances of dying in a parachuting accident increase the more jumps I make (statistically)?

Question

Is this the gambler's fallacy to assume that with each subsequent jump the odds of dying get smaller?

Answer 1

Yes, of course. If the chances of death are one in a million, then after a million jumps you are statistically dead.  In other words, all else being equal with respect to risk, the one-jump odds (p), are the same each time you jump and the risk of dying (P) is the sum of (p) over n jumps.

P = Σp 1->n = np

Answer 2

Assuming that a parachute accident is a random event, then the probability remains the same for each jump you take, and thinking that your chances change would be the gambler's fallacy (though I would argue the gambler's fallacy as the reverse where the gambler thinks that after 1000 successful jumps, he has a really high chance of dying if the accident rate is 1/1000)      Your total chance of dying increases with the total number of jumps you take, so the less you jump, the less your chance of dying.  

In actuality, your probability of having an accident may be dependent on your experience, so it might change over time.  For example, maybe more experienced jumpers can pack chutes better, so they have less accidents, or the reverse: more experienced jumpers do stupider things and are less careful so they have more accidents.

Edit:

I have no Idea what John is referring to, but 50:50 is nonsense for your chances of an accident.  if that were true, then half of all parachuters would die.  Nonsense.  nobody would parachute.

I also have to disagree mathematically with bdwolfound.  You cannot just sum up all the probabilities.  Let's say your chance of an accident is 1/1000.  It's wrong to say that after a thousand jumps your chance of dying is 1000*1/1000=1; i.e. you are dead.  Totally wrong.  Your chance of dying after 1000 jupmps is the converse of the chance of 1000 successful jumps.  you have a 999/1000 (.999) chance of a successful jump.  So your chance of 1000 successful jumps in a row are .999^1000=.37.  You have a 37% chance of having 1000 successful jumps and therefore a 1-.37 or 63% chance of an accident.  63%, not 100%.  See the difference?

If that's hard to understand, then under bd's reasoning, it would be impossible to not flip a tails after two coin tosses.  Since you have a 1/2 chance of flipping a tails (or not flipping a heads), what's your chance of flipping a tails after two flips?  according to that math, it would be 2*1/2, or 1, i.e. inevitable. Well, try it.  Can you do two flips and not flip a tails?  Of course, it's not inevitable, and therefore that math doesn't work.  The real probability of flipping at least one tails after two tosses is 1-P(two heads in a row), or 1-(1/2)^2=.75, or a 75% chance: likely but not inevitable.

Answer 3

There's a lot of confusion in some of the answers here about the nature of probability.

The chances of you dying _in any particular jump_ are always exactly the same, everything else being equal. They don't go up depending on how many jumps you have made.

The chances of you dying _overall_ will naturally go up the more jumps you make. This probability is equal to the combined probability of dying in each individual jump, so the more jumps, the higher the probability.

Answer 4

No - the odds don't change because each jump is unrelated to the next or last. The odds are always 50:50

Answer 5

Overall the chances of you dying from a parachute accident increase with each jump you make. (If you make zero jumps in your lifetime the chances of you dying in a parachuting accident are very low - you have to have someone else land on top of you and kill you. The more jumps you make the higher the chances of dying at some point.)

The chances of dying in a particular jump will be a bit higher with your first few jumps but then probably remain fairly constant after you have got some experience behind you. Assuming you don't become overconfident and skip safety checks that is!

If you want to find out how dangerous it is, why not get a life insurance quote, and then tell them you forgot to mention you do parachuting as a hobby, and see how much it goes up by.

Answer 6

If you take the exact same jump under the exact same circumstances, then your chances of death will always be the same.

Answer 7

well it shouldnt... thats like asking would my chances of dieing increase everytime i take a breath... it will stay they same.... its all in the spin of the wheel (techincally speaking)... now dont get scared because i said that... but if u love jumping then dont bw afraid of it... u love it so y would u care about ur chances as long as ur having fun and u love it... thats wut count

Answer 8

Yes I think they increase

Statistically, the more times you cross a road the more chances you have of been knocked down.

If you are talking percentages, I think they would still be the same no matter how many time you jump put of a plane or cross a road.

From a gamblers point of view, for example the odds of getting Blackjack out of a single deck of 52 cards stay the same.