It's all about how you say it

Airplane travel is deemed to be the safest form of travel. But that doesn't seem to be the case anytime there is a plane crash anywhere in the world. The news typically gets picked up by the media and is splashed all over. As Daniel Levitin writes in A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics, "News reports showed that 2014 was one of the deadliest years for plane crashes: 22 accidents resulted in 992 fatalities." Close to 1,000 people dying in a year while using a particular form of travel does sound quite a lot. But is that the case? Or does it sound quite a lot because of the way the entire statement is framed? If framed differently would things look differently? The answer is yes. Allow me to explain. While the news media picks up and reports air crashes in great detail, they never tend to write about so many more flights carrying so many more passengers making safe-landings on airstrips all over the world. A safe landing doesn't really make for news. A crash does. This is an essential point that needs to be kept in mind whenever reading a report on an air crash. This

This article was originally published on January 25, 2021.