Interesting Non Poker Thinking Problem

[Carl_William]

about 105 years

[Carl_William]

OJ's next wife. Age is a moot point -- any age....

[dogsballs]

On the topic of old folk, but OT...

A guy from S. Africa, nicknamed the blitz, just beat the world record for the 100 m "dash" by a person over 100 yrs of age (I think he's 104). He bested the previous record of 36 secs by several secs.

Unfortunately, the official clock had a power problem, so the poor old geezer has to do it again this weekend to have it verified as the official record... [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[GuyOnTilt]

Hey David,

I haven't read any other responses yet, but the first thought that came to mind (after I fully understood the question) was it would be exactly older than the 3rd oldest American ever. If the records are (arbitrarily) 119, 117, and 115, then out of everybody who lived to be 115 or older, over half of them were alive a year later. Actually, I guess upon further thought, my real guess would be approaching one year YOUNGER than the 2nd oldest ever, if that makes any sense.

If that's not at all where I'm supposed to go with this and you are in fact looking for a concrete number, my guess would be in the range of 112-115.

GoT

[dogsballs]

[ QUOTE ]
If the records are (arbitrarily) 119, 117, and 115, then out of everybody who lived to be 115 or older, over half of them were alive a year later.

[/ QUOTE ]



GoT,

You're neglecting something. The proportion of the poulation tails off as you go older. So maybe 7 americans died at age 115, 3 died at 117 and only one at 119.

woof

[TomCollins]

The official answer- 106
Probability of dying

[Carl_William]

If you have the data, it probably would be very simple to figure it out to a close degree. At first thought, I would do a binary chop on the data -- kind of like a tournament. Separate the data into age range groups and see who makes the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and then the finals(i.e., death). But you have to have the data, and then message it a little.

(Note: binary chop is a form of computer programming slang used in some schools)

[bsk1999]

According to the Illustrated Life Table, the table commonly used among actuaries to calculate the expected future lifetime of a person selected at random from the general public, at age 103 your probability of survival is .50101 . So, according to the people who do this for a living, this would be the correct answer. However, there are different Mortality tables that could be used to come up with a slightly different (but similar) answer.

[Toonces]

Yes, for actuaries, this is published information, though possibly out of date. My actuarial table agrees with bsk in that at age 103, your probability of dying is almost exactly 50%.

A more interesting trivia question IMO: At what age is the probability of surviving 1 more year the highest?

[Roman]

78