Interesting Links for 12-09-2012

[andrewducker]

• How Daleks scare their young.
  (tags: comic funny DrWho daleks )
• Nick Clegg calls bigots bigots, sadly then retracts statement.
  (tags: nickclegg lgbt bigotry )
• Four Years of Edits 2008-2011 on Open Streetmap. I wonder if it will ever take over.
  (tags: viaFanf visualization history maps video )
• Playing "Find the Lady" with transparent cups. Damned

Comments

[steer]

Cohort life expectancy is the best model you can have if you don't want to include "prediction". However, it is, as pointed out, likely an underestimate. Death rates for young people are incredibly low however

[andrewducker]

Aaah, now that _is_ interesting. I had no idea that a lot of the "oldest person" records had been debunked, and thought that therefore the oldest age was relatively stable at 115-ish. Thanks!

[steer]

Contrast this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_verified_supercentenarians_who_died_before_1980

With these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_men

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_women

The oldest person on the "oldest women who died before 1980" list is 113 and 214 days. She does not make the list of 100 oldest women ever.

The extensions seem obvious to me. Of course part of this is population growth and part record keeping (for the verification part).

[andrewducker]

That is interesting. Clearly there's a big leap going on there. I wonder if something specific happened in the early 80s!

[steer]

I don't think it was a "suddenly in the 1980s" effect. If you order the list of "deaths before 1980" by age the oldest are mostly dying in the 1960s and 1970s (19 of the oldest 25 died between 1960 and 1980

[channelpenguin]

To me, how long I, or anyone, might live, is less relevant that how long we maintain good mental and physical health. I'd rather die at 80 (or 70, or 60 or 50) having had very little pain or disability than to survive sick, in pain and confused/impaired/depressed to an older age. I've had just enough injury and chronic pain in my life* to know how much of your humanity it takes from you, and how different "existing" is to "living".

I wonder what the statistics are on that sort of quality of life issue (perhaps hard to gather...).

*[this is contrasted well to me because of my (so far) generally excellent physical health/fitness/capability, and my generally satistfactory mental/intellectual function!]

[steer]

This might interest you

[andrewducker]

Apparently not:
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2012/september/actuaries-have-been-too-cautious-when-estimating-life-expectancy-expert-says/

[steer]

Oooh "actuaries have had to adjust their calculations to take account of increased longevity" -- this lie makes me furious. This was widely touted recently when people complained about public sector pensions. It's as if insurance companies came to their senses some time last year and went "hey, people live longer, who'dathunkit". Unbelievably some people actually believed this. In fact, they have long been making such predictions... indeed the best source of life expectancy for some time was actuarial tables.

The rest of the article is quite interesting but that particular phrase which some people (I'm sure not you) genuinely believe sends me into a fury. It may be that there has been some under and over estimating going on... doubtless the models will be refined further in the future.

[andrewducker]

Presumably they have to to adjust their calculations for the increased longevity. But presumably they do this every year!

[steer]

Exactly this. They have for all of recent history known that people were going to live longer in the future and made their best attempts to work out to what extent this would continue.

[steer]

Sorry, that wasn't my most calm and considered response ever. It is an interesting article.

[steer]

Just noticed I used cohort here when I meant "period".