The editorial Is Plane Travel or Car Travel Safer was inspired by an idea about critical thinking that was present in both Freakonomics and Think, Fast and Slow. We are prone to logical fallacies when we rely on our intuition and pre-made assumptions, and we may jump into conclusions that are in fact, faulty in nature. In order to make better decisions, we need to understand the cause and causations under common phenomena, and think in a rational, deliberate way.

Consider the syllogism below:

All roses are flowers.

Some flowers fade quickly.

Therefore, some roses fade quickly.

This conclusion is invalid, although it might seem valid intuitively. It is possible that ‘all roses’ are exclusive with ‘flowers that fade quickly’, which means that flowers that fade quickly could be violet, daisy, etc.

We often encounter scenarios that require us to reason, like considering the validity of the syllogism above. Is Plane Travel or Car Travel Safer presents a scenario in which plane travel seem more dangerous than car travel, explains why it isn’t necessarily true with data visualization, and explores the reasoning of why people may be more daunted by plane travel.