The Chances

According to the article, Marry Go Round, a woman that is 40 years old is not more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married. It arises from a number of misconceptions: terrorists are common and many people die from terrorist attacks, and women that are older are less likely to get married. While it may be true that some women who are older are unmarried simply out of a desire to remain single, it is also true that some women prefer to remain single until they have their affairs in order. Therefore, another hypothesis for the claim is ignored which disproves the notion somewhat. Also, it is only from an availability bias that terrorist attacks seem frequent. In the large scheme of things, terrorist attacks account for a very small number of total deaths in the world. As of 2003, less than 5,000 people (of both genders) died from terrorist attacks according to the U.S. State Department. Therefore, the chances of a woman being killed in a terrorist attack are very slim considering 2,500 people out of the 5,000 were likely women, and out of approximately 6 billion people living in 2003, 3 billion of those would have been women, giving a ratio of .000000833. The ratio denotes the number of women living compared to the number of women who were likely killed by terrorism in 2003 using some rough estimates.

To summarize, the myth that women who are unmarried after 40 are more likely to be killed by terrorist attacks than to get married is false and it exists due to an availability bias and ignoring alternative hypotheses.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/terrorist.asp
http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/polsum.html
http://www.prb.org/DataFinder/Geography/Data.aspx?loc=241