8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

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RobertKay
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by RobertKay »

Alan Arnette wrote:
I know this table reflects summits to death and not attempts to deaths but for discussion it might be useful.
I think the situation is even safer than this implies. The ratio typically quoted is deaths to summits; but Alan is saying deaths to attempted summits is more accurate. However, many of the deaths are those who never intended to summit. They are local mountain workers (almost all Sherpa) carrying loads in a support capacity. These guys make many (often dozens) of forays onto the mountain vs the typical Western climber who will make three four forays. This hugely increases their exposure to objective risks and gives them many more opportunities to make an error in judgment. So, if you really want to know how dangerous it is for a Western climber you go with Alan's death to attempted summits but only include Western climbers. The odds increase quite significantly when you reduce the numerator and raise the denominator, but they are still not very good vs virtually any other activity. We certainly wouldn't risk driving our families anywhere if there were a 1% chance of death in any given week or month.

This is not meant to in any way lessen the significance of the mountain workers' deaths. Any death is tragic. It is meant to address the OP's opening questions about what the risk for a person attempting all 14 might be and how do they justify that risk. I know of no mountain workers attempting to climb all 14 so that leaves only Western climbers to be considered. Whether the risk of death is 85% or 1%, the question is still interesting. Besides the obvious answer of self-confidence and "it can't happen to me because I'm smarter/better" I think climbers in general have a different calculus for risk vs reward and high achieving climbers may be even more different from normal.

The discussion will now devolve into name-calling of hapless, rich, white, ego-driven Everest climbers as they are carried over dead brown guys on their way to the top so they can impress people at big soirees in New York City. [-X
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TallGrass
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by TallGrass »

If Peak A's death rate is 10% and Peak B's 15%,
statistically you only have a 1.5% chance of dying on both. :mrgreen:
The more peaks you add... :-" Use that to convince your spouse it's safe.
AyeYo wrote:
madbuck wrote:What are the odds of completing/surviving all the 14ers if somebody starts with Capitol? (Or, more reasonably, Longs)?
How many people start with Capitol? No one - or certainly not enough to skew the stats.
"Odds of completing/surviving all the 14ers" starting with Longs?
Above average, as 10% started just one class below the toughest standard route. 8)

Top 10 - 1st Colorado 14er Climbed
[#3] Longs Peak 1156 Users (10%)
http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/usrpeaksstat.php

Of the T10 first climbed, five are C2, four C1, one C3 by their easiest route. The first 14er for 25.5% of respondents didn't make the Top 10 (i.e. #11-58). Almost a fifth of users (19.2%) haven't noted (or climbed?) their first 14er.

Capitol was the first 14er for a guy* I met on the summit who climbed it with his girlfriend :iluvu: *aww* (described it as "spicy" in the summit register). Separate, she bags peaks whereas he climbs rock. He could bag all 58, but I'm sure he'd rather be on the Flatirons than Bross.

CO 14er stats can't account for unlogged summiters, like Navaho on Blanca in the 1700s or folk who treat it like another nature walk. Doing 58 CO 14ers is more about logistics and persistence. No one's gone "57 ABC" because they plummeted 1,000' back to CV ranch, but the pursuit often yields to family, career, or other priorities.

Group stats apply to groups, not individuals.
Personal stats are aggregate, not predictive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy et al.
* 'Statistically,' 100% of my Capitol attempts resulted in meeting someone on the summit for whom it was their first 14er. :P
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peter303
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by peter303 »

Most recent years I ve seen about ten Colorado 14er fatalities reported in the press. (Below ten past two years) if you assume several hundred thousand summits, then that is in the thousandths of a percent range.
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DArcyS
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by DArcyS »

ezabielski wrote:1. They aren't independent events. Every ascent/attempt will give you more experience, making it less likely that you will make a fatal decision the next time. What's the death rate on these peaks for people with 2 8000m peaks? 10 peaks? 13 peaks?
They are independent events.

Keep in mind that the calculation is for the fictitious "representative climber" who represents the entire family of climbers. If one were to randomly select (as a thought experiment) one of the past climbers from this family and without knowing anything else about the climber (and whether or not this climber was successful), one would assign these odds for this past climber to have completed these climbs. If one randomly selected each of the past climbers for each ascent and tallied the results (to complete the thought experiment fully), these results would naturally mirror the data that defined the population

If one randomly selected a climber and then learned the climber was Reinhold Messner, you would then adjust the probability for success. In essence, this is what you and others are doing in your argument -- you're trying to apply the odds of the representative climber to that of a specific climber. Regarding the claim that experience will make it less likely that one will make a fatal decision for various reasons such as improved decision making and conditioning, this experience is incorporated into the representative climber because all of the ascents are used to compute the odds, including the climbs where climbers have learned from experience.

Recognizing that the odds for any one peak are the odds established by the entire population of climbers for that peak, one sees that the representative odds of one peak are independent of the representative odds of another peak. Which is to say, the overall success or failure rate of one peak does not affect the overall success or failure rate of another peak.

The method employed in Mike's calculation is correct, but it has a limitation of only being relevant as a representation of the entire population of climbers and not any one climber that is known. To establish the odds for any known climber, one can then begin to use conditional probabilities that account for experience.

So, that's my take based upon what I remember from my probability and statistics course.
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by justiner »

So. this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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DArcyS
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by DArcyS »

justiner wrote:So. this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Yeah, I guess you must have gotten an even better grade in prob and stats than I did. :-D
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Re: 8,000 meter death rate is 85%?!?!

Post by jdorje »

The events are independent.

The probabilities are not. Each event changes the probability for the next event. This is related to the ecological fallacy, if you try to apply the worldwide death rate for each peak to our individual hyper-experienced (and growing more experienced with each peak) climber.

I'm sticking with the 33% calculated above as the upper limit. I suspect the actual death rate is substantially lower.
"I don't think about the past, and the future is a mystery. Only the present matters."
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