What Are Your Odds?

New math for calculating smokers' lung-cancer risk. Don't flunk this quiz

Smoking seems to bring out the inner statistician in people. Sure, smokers know their habit can lead to lung cancer, but what are the odds it actually will? How does smoking a pack a day for 20 years compare in risk with smoking two packs daily for 40 years? And if you quit, how much do your odds improve? The results of a study published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute offer smokers some help--at least with the math. The tricky part is knowing what to do with the answer.

As you might expect, the risk...

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