Gotta love statistics. You can use statistics to confirm or deny just about anything lol. I'd like to see the statistics of hikers that actually ventured into bear country that were attacked by a bear. Probably still quite low, but more sobering than you might realize. I'd wager something like 0.5% (1 in 200), but still higher than lightning strikes.
I am the OP and I guess a cranky statistician, I majored in it in university. I guess you were being facetious but in fact statistics is a rigorous mathematics and you just cannot use statistics to prove anything.
I agree that statistics is a rigorous mathematics, just saying that people often misuse statistics to mislead others, either knowingly or otherwise... You need to understand the data from which the statistics originated. You shouldn't include everyone the country over in a cougar attack scenario, it is absolutely misleading, since a large number of people live in urban areas, where cougar attacks are very improbable. I could say that the odds of dying from dysentery are about 10%... which might very well be true if you include the entire world population, since access to clean water is a real problem in many countries. In the USA dying from dysentery is highly unlikely.
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