What's the craziest thing that happened in your school?

high. as of 2013-2014 according to https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84

there are 98,271 public schools, 33,619 private, and 7,236 postsecondary (colleges). so 139,126 schools total in the usa.

on average, according to https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp there are 180 days of school a year.

as far as actual shootings, this number is harder to pinpoint, as a "school shooting" in many reports could be someone who committed suicide in their car, parked on a school campus. Does that count as an actual shooting? how do we really define a shooting? that said, this usa today article says there are on average 1 a week since 2013. so since the numbers i pulled earlier are from the 2013-2014 year, that would mean 25 weeks ( i rounded down to account for, lets say snow days) in a year. so 25 shootings a year for schools.

now here is where my math gets fuzzy because, well i did not take advantage of math classes, and was a sociology major (tho full disclosure, have not graduated yet.. im on like a 10 year plan)

so 139,126 schools having 180 days of class = 25,042,680 days of class being held- each of the 139k schools x 180 days of class equals the 25 million total.

now if we divide the number of events (25,042,680) by possible outcomes of 25 school shootings a year(number pulled from US weekly) =25/25,042,680 = 9.9x10-7, so less than 1 percent chance of one occuring.

since you are asking for the odds of attending and not witnessing, 100-less than 1 percent= 99.99999% chance of not witnessing.

if i did the math wrong, someone please correct me cause this problem kinda stumps me, but i believe the days of school, number of schools, and number of shootings is correct. Im not positive on the probability.

that said, each and every shooting is tragic, and i feel sick when i hear them happen. School is fun, and i like it. I would never wish anyone to go through one.

TLDR- 99.99999 percent chance you do not witness one

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent