Night flying in the mountians in a cessna 150,

In article ,
wrote:

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:25:40 -0800, Ron Garret
wrote:

no, I think his point is that you are more likely to have an engine
failure tomorrow if you have flown 10,000 hours than if you have flown
10 hours.

No, that is NOT the point I was making. (And if you thought it was,
would you please point out what I wrote that made you think so? I
obviously need to hone my pedagogy.)



rg

This is what made me think so:


"That's true, but the longer you fly (or play the lottery) the closer
your probability of experiencing an engine failure (or a lottery win)
some time your career approaches 1.

Of course, you might have to fly/play for a *very* long time before
that
probability actually gets close to 1, but sooner or later it will be 1
to any desired degree of accuracy. So the statement "fly long enough
and
you will experience an engine failure" is pretty close to being true.
The question is how long is "long enough."

rg"

Well, gee, you and Peter are both making it challenging to frame
respectful responses here. You wrote:

"I think his point is that you are more likely to have an engine failure
tomorrow..."

but that is clearly not what I said. What I said was that you are more
likely to have an engine failure "SOME TIME IN YOUR CAREER". Not
"tomorrow". Big difference.

It's as if I said, "The sky is blue" and you responded "I think the
point he was trying to make is that the sky is green." Well, you're
right, the sky isn't green. But I never said that it was.

Let me try this again:

1. The probability of experiencing an engine failure (or any other
improbable event for that matter) AT SOME POINT IN YOUR FLYING CAREER
goes up the more you fly. It goes up monotonically but nonlinearly
according to the formula 1-(1-P)^N, which asymptotically approaches 1 as
N gets large.

2. The probability of experiencing an engine failure (or any other
improbable event) on any one particular flight does NOT depend on how
often you fly. (This is the point that I think you and Peter have been
trying to make, and with which I have never disagreed.)

3. The sky is BLUE (except lately in southern California).

rg