How can geologists really know that there is a miniscule chance that the Yellowstone super volcano will erupt in the next few thousand years?

Question

How can geologists really know that there is a miniscule chance that the Yellowstone super volcano will erupt in the next few thousand years?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

We know the statistical chance by counting the time between previous eruptions. The time between eruptions has been found to be very long, 1 to 2 million years, and the last eruption was half a million years ago, so any given day has only a tiny chance of being the big day of the eruption.