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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates



02-17-12 Update - While Average Lifespans Increase, 114 Remains A Stubborn And Mysterious Upper Bound. Why?

Here's an interesting post on the topic on Gompertz Law of human mortality, dealing with predicted aging and the mathematics of telomeres.

It also links to a cute death calculator based on if you were born today, but it's missing the function most people would be interested in. The question to answer is, if you've ALREADY lived to a certain age, what are the odds you'll HOW much longer? The data's all there. We just need someone to code it up. Let me know if you find it somewhere in cyberspace.

GapMinder Data Visualization

Gompertz Law of human mortality

Thanks to Roamer, here's the link I was looking for...

Predicting Death

Plus the parent site is an excellent source for risk analysis of stories in the media...

Understand Uncertainty

2 comments:

  1. Found this recently:
    http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/76

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent Link, Roamer! This is EXACTLY what I had in mind. Now, the more lifestyle factors that can be modeled, the better we can find that optimal line between quality and length of life. Thanks for posting!

    ReplyDelete