"Ron Parsons" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Gary L. Drescher" wrote:

I think your Alaskan acquaintances may have been pulling your leg. :-)

That is of course possible just as it is possible that you may be
pulling my leg with your numbers.

That's why I provided the sources of my numbers, rather than expecting
anyone to accept my word. It takes just a couple of minutes to verify the
accuracy of what I said.

As best as I recall though, I got my information from someone who
insured them and enterprises which used their services. Perhaps his
actuaries had a different source than you.

Perhaps. But then your acquaintance's source of information differs by *one
or two orders of magnitude* from what can be calculated from the FAA
database's actual count of pilots, or the NTSB database's actual count of
fatal accidents, or the Alaskan state government's estimate of Alaska's
population. How reliable, then, do you think your acquaintance's
unspecified source can be? At some point, doesn't the evidence force you to
conclude either that your acquaintance must have been mistaken (perhaps he
was passing along an undocumented rumor someone had conveyed to him, just as
you are doing), or that there was a mistake in your understanding or
recollection of what he told you?

By the way, even with just 1 pilot for every 57 persons, Alaska has a per
capita pilot population 8 times higher than the US overall--pretty
impressive.

--Gary


--
Ron