T om Hayes Page 1 of 3 WERE RICHER PASSENGERS MORE LIKELY TO SURVIVE THE SINKING OF THE TITATINC? Introduc tion : The sinking of the RMS Tita nic in 19 12 is one of the most famous peacetime hu man tragedies of the 20 th Centur y. The early 20 th Centur y was a period of profound wealth disparity, as such this brie f report shall endeav our to explore the effect a passengers ’ we alth had upon their possibility of surviving this disas ter , where the passenger ’s fare is proxied for their wealt h. Figure 1 : Surv ival R ate for the RMS Tita nic Disaster 62% of the passengers who boarded the RMS Tita nic on its voyage across the Atlan tic never made it to shore . The human toll of this disaster is unquestionabl e, however , asking the right questions such as whether fare affected sur vivab ility , could lead to the promotion of impr oved survival rates in the future Data: Table 1 : Survival Rates Acros s Fares Class % Survived % Expired First 62.96 37.0 4 Second 47.28 52.7 2 Third 24.2 4 75.76 T om Hayes Page 2 of 3 Figure 2 : Division of Passengers ac ross Fa res The majority of passenge rs on the RMS Titanic were in the lowest fare group, th e Third class . Cond itions for these pass engers were starkly different from the opulenc e enjoyed by the first class passengers. No more is this clearer than in the p ositioning of the cabi ns, as the fares decreased , so to the passengers cabin in the ship sank deeper into th e ship ’s hull; whereby the Th ird class passengers were further from the ships top d eck, which w ould prove to have catastrop hic consequences. Figure 3 : Surv ival Rate Across Fares Implications : T om Hayes Page 3 of 3 It is clear that the fare a passenger paid for would prove to have subs ta ntial influence on their survival rate in the face of this disaster, with first class passenger s being over twice as like ly to survive tha n third class passengers A s such, wealth of a passenger great ly influenced survival , clear ly shown below Figure 4 : Human Toll of the Dis aster (% Survival Rate Across Fares) Limitations : Th is report was limited in the depth it could go to by available time for analysis , as well a s by the still develop ing s kills of this researcher regarding the Pytho n programm ing language. L imitations may be present in the data as well, the re may not be ade quate reporting of stowaways for instance A dditionally, this analysis did not account for passenger sex which no doubt a lso infl uenced survival rates due to the prevailing culture of ‘ women and child ren first ’ Howeve r, the trend in the data is clear, that the w ealth ier a passenger w as, the greater their chan ces of survival. Further statist ical regression analysis would facilitate inference of significan ce on this topic also