ABSTRACT
In December 2017, the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) announced the winner of its International Statistic of the Year. Contrary to the statement of the Royal Statistical Society citation, the figures directly comparing numbers killed by lawnmower with those killed by Jihadist terrorists do not "highlight misunderstandings of risk" or "illuminate the bigger picture." Indeed, rather than "inform debate and highlight misunderstandings of risk in people's lives," as stated by the RSS, this example does exactly the opposite. It provides a highly misleading view of risk because it omits crucial causal information that explains the statistics observed and that is very different for the two incomparable numbers. Using the number of deaths per year to compare different types of "risk" fails to consider the range of factors that affect the true risk to particular individuals or groups. Crucially, there are also causal factors that explain the number of terrorist deaths that need to be considered.
