Cruel and Unusual Geography

Yesterday I asked the question

If you, for some strange reason, wanted your child to be kidnapped and held overnight by a stranger, how long would you have to leave him or her outside, alone and unsupervised in America, for this to be statistically likely to happen?

There were a number of answer offered, ranging from a rather pessimistic 17 minutes to “their entire lifetime”. The answer, calculated by Warwick Cairns, author of How to Live Dangerously, and published by Lenore Skenazy on her excellent Free-range Kids site is an astonishing 750,000 years! I can only guess at the methodology used to reach that number, but suspect that Lance Wiggs has it right in his comment. I didn’t even pay much attention in stats class back at school, so can’t comment on what “statistically likely” means.

It’s worth remembering, too, that almost all abductions are by family members or others known to the child — abductions by a stranger are (clearly!) very rare.

I’d like to close with Lance’s comment. He’s right, and I’ll write more about this later.

Almost all people are good.