I'm pretty sure Russell is correct. Survival rate and probability of
survival are the same (unless you know additional information about an
individual case). Remember, in order for there to be one death in 150
cases, only ONE person had to die, and each person has a 4% chance of
dying, so that the probability of no one dying is 1 minus the sum of the
probabilities of all the ways in which one or more people might have died.
It's like making a machine with 150 parts that are each only 96% reliable.
It would be amazing if that thing did not fail in some way.

Sean

At 08:30 AM 4/10/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>     At a survival rate of 96% a population of 150 with no deaths has a
>     probability of about 0.96^150 = 0.002.
>
>That doesn't sound correct, intuitively speaking.  (Of course, my experience
>is that probability is frequently counter-intuitive...)  With a survival
>rate of 96%, you'd expect 6 deaths in 150 cases, and no deaths is only
>slightly surprising...  Perhaps "survival rate" is not the same as the
>probability of dying...
>
>BillW
>
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