So when the “1 in 2 of us will get cancer” statistic comes up on TV, is it right that us and the person we’re sitting with are wondering who will get it?
That doesn’t seem to make sense to me, but at the same time I can’t explain it.
So does “1 in 2”, “1 in 10” etc mean “2 people sat on a couch, 1 of you is getting cancer”, “look at 10 people in the street and 1 will get cancer”?
EDIT: cheers everyone for your explanations! Colour me informed.
In: Biology
It just means that the cancer rate in whichever country the stat is from is roughly 50%.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that in every possible group of 2 people there will be 1 who gets cancer. But in your example of a random group of 10 people on the street, you would expect roughly 5 of them to do so.
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