The End is Near

I was teaching to a college audience this morning when I was trying to educate on how statistics work, and what makes them credible. For somee reason, I couldn’t get the class to understand why not all statistics are credible. What got me stuck was that every student in the room was somehow taught that statistics are relevant as long as they are statistics. I guess watching some Youtube video taught these students that what makes something credible is that they have statistics backing up their conclusions.

Moving on from that, I came across an article that indicated that the last instance of spontaneous combustion occurred in 2010, and that incidents tend to occur every 14 years. Which brought me to the college student conclusion that the next incident is about to happen next year in 2024.

And this has me scared because statistically one in a total of over 6 billion people is going to spontaneously combust this year, and that person could end up being me. I mean, I know how statistics work (even if I can’t explain it to a group of freshmen students in college successfully), and even though I do, it still scares me. I mean, out of that 6 billion people, it has to happen to someone, right? Why not me? I mean, I’m not exactly exempt just because I paid my taxes on time. That ole’ spontaneous combustion monster is out to get me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.