Burning Man Death Rates – A Short Lesson in Statistics

Re:Burning Man Death Rates – A Short Lesson in Statistics by alexgoodhart on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @02:42PM (#49912701)

Yeah this article is oblivious in such a painful way. The author should really consider their relationship with statistics, which they seem to think govern the world rather than are an abstract extraction from it.

Burning Man has a hugely skewed age demographic, one that has a significant share of deaths due to car+other accidents, suicide, overdose, homicide, and cancer. Like nearly 7/10 chance of dying from once of those.

Beside cancer those are all strongly linked to poverty, and cancer death in younger adulthood may be linked to poverty.

The place certainly has extremes but it’s also a destination where people go with groups and have basically a nanny state watching them.

Inane work, op.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Burning Man Death Rates – A Short Lesson in Statistics by glitcher on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @03:05PM (#49912974)

Article mentions age demographics and "selection bias of healthier attendees and other confounding demographic factors" right at the top.

Oblivious in such a painful? I'm still open to hearing a sound argument to back that up. Your arguments are more dismissive and did not address anything specific in the article you disagreed with.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Burning Man Death Rates – A Short Lesson in Statistics by golfer on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @04:19PM (#49913805)

Did you bother to read the article? This is covered.

[ Parent | on HN ]