Dear Math Thinkers,

I’m sure you all heard about the terrible events in Connecticut on Friday. You might be sad, confused, and a little scared to come to school today–I know I am. But thinking like mathematicians might make us a feel a little bit safer and feel a whole lot better about the world.

There are over 100,000 schools in the United States with over 70 millions students in them. In recent years, the number of violent deaths at schools has been between 11 and 49 students. That’s out of 70 million. If you put that fraction on our Probability Meter, it would be so close to zero that you couldn’t even see it.  The chance that any one school will have a school shooting is almost zero. The chance that any one student will die in a school shooting is extremely close to zero.

Anytime there’s a risk, however, we prepare ourselves for it. We practice our drills, keep our eyes open, and practice safety at school, so if the unthinkable ever happens, we’re prepared. And we do our best to prevent future tragedies like this from happening.

But we don’t live in fear.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck