The oldest person in the world never holds that title for very long

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-oldest-person-in-the-world-keeps-dying/

by Tenoke • 11 years ago

56 52 11 years ago

couchand• 11 years ago

I can't stand this parenthetical. it's not strange at all!

(Strangely, the 20th century is considered to have started Jan. 1, 1901, so there are a handful of other, verified women still alive who were also born in the 19th century.)

quesera5• 11 years ago

Yeah, sloppy.

It's sad that 538 has turned into a pop-stats site that runs on volume and snappy headlines.

hnnewguy• 11 years ago

It's sad that 538 has turned into a pop-stats site that runs on volume and snappy headlines.

It's our fault, they're catering to our demands. You can't run a media company any other way. No one wants to read read (although I'd bet on average everyone spends far more time reading). So you get wham-bam, buzzfeed-esque content. Even on HN, long form articles will inevitably be met in the comment section with a "tl;dr?".

scotty795• 11 years ago

> (Strangely, the 20th century is considered to have started Jan. 1, 1901 it's not strange at all!

Are you a Lua programmer?

sp3322• 11 years ago

There is no Year 0. So the first century was Year 1 - Year 100, the second century was Year 101-200 etc.

ScottBurson• 11 years ago

Wow, is Lua now the canonical example of a language that uses 1-origin indexing? No one remembers Fortran anymore? God I feel old...

mcv2• 11 years ago

Yeah, not sure what the "strangely" is doing there.

steego• 11 years ago

Yes it is. You're confusing what's right with what seems intuitively wrong to people. It's strange because it's inconsistent with most systems which group numbers by significant digits. For example, a person who is 30 years old has entered their 30's.

For someone who is clearly perturbed that most people don't know this archaic and inconsistent rule, I'm surprised you're perturbed by a writer who is helping your cause by including a parenthetical. I suspect the writer selected the word "Strangely" to prompt the reader to pay special attention to the rule, because what he's about to say is going to violate many people's intuition and assumptions.

If you can't stand that people are unfamiliar with this rule, then this writer should be on your Christmas list.

jchrisa• 11 years ago

One of my favorite things about HN is when people take the time to be extremely clear about something that's almost obvious. Always gives me a chuckle.

cowsandmilk• 11 years ago

For example, a person who is 30 years old has entered their 30's.

This is a different linguistic construct. We have decades like the 1990's, which are like the 30's.

Linguistically, we have:

1800's = 1800-1899

19th century = 1801-1900 (since AD started in 1, so the first 100 years, or century were 1-100)

One of those forms is linguistically similar to your 30's, the other is not.

eCa3• 11 years ago

inconsistent rule

Imho, it is not inconsistent and it is not a rule. It is a fact (as long as one uses the Gregorian calendar where there is no year zero[1]).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28year%29

alan-crowe• 11 years ago

This relates to the argument about whether array indexes should start at one or zero. The standard argument for one-indexing is that it is what people do. But do they really do that?

The first century is 1 to 100. The second century is 101 to 200. and so on. After a while things get a bit blurry. Eventually the 21st century is 2000 to 2099, as proven by humans holding their big parties on Jan 1st 2000 instead of Jan 1st 2001.

Humans start at one, but weary of the strict logic of it. Without acknowledging it and without agreeing which century, humans sneak in a 99 year century so that centuries work as if zero-indexed; 0-99, 100-199,...,1900-1999, 2000-2099.

What then of the argument "Array indexes should start at 1 because that is what humans do."? It fails two ways. First, that is not in fact what humans do, (and the parenthetical strangely is evidence of that.) Second, humans weary of strict logic. Having the computer do what humans do is a bad idea.

mcv2• 11 years ago

Maybe the big parties were not so much to celebrate the arrival of the 21st century, but the arrival of the magical year 2000 with its flying cars and stuff.

baddox• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, what time interval do you think of when you hear the term "the 1900s"?

eCa3• 11 years ago

(Not couchand, but) 1900-1999, which is not the same thing as the 20th century.

scotty795• 11 years ago

I invented a puzzle some time ago I haven't solved yet:

Calculate how often on average oldest person in the world dies.

Assume whatever is necessary to give the answer. For example that population pyramid is constant over time and known.

Someone2• 11 years ago

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/349155/how-often-doe...

simcop2387• 11 years ago

What i find interesting there is that multiple approaches seemed to arrive at about the same result, 2/3 of a year between deaths. That makes me think it's highly probable that it's the right answer for the current time period at least.

gwern• 11 years ago

Note that one of the answers there is based on the GRG data used in OP. Different graph but same conclusion - average tenure has dropped, Calment was a monster.

pwoeir2• 11 years ago

Oh, neat - I wrote the top answer there (over two years ago apparently!)

I stand by the modelling, although it's embarrassing to read my two year old code.

scotty795• 11 years ago

Awesome. But forgive me not reading the answers. I want this to remain puzzle for me. I don't want to learn the answer. I want to invent it some day. Same way I feel about Rubik's cube.

I still have fond memories about finding out precise recursive equation, implementing it in LOGO for Atari and waiting minutes to find out the answer to how many times you have to try to burn all matches in a box by picking them from the box one by one at random, lighting them and putting them back in the box before picking next one.

bandrami• 11 years ago

It's just a Poisson process

TheLoneWolfling• 11 years ago

...Except that:

* Birth rates are changing

* Mortality rates are changing

* For any one person, the chance of dying (generally) increases as they grow older

* Deaths are correlated. For instance, things like the 2003 tsunami.

halis• 11 years ago

All I read was the headline and I feel like we need to go over some things you may have missed in school...

trebor• 11 years ago

Yes, last time I checked life has a 100% death rate...

keslag• 11 years ago

Current numbers indicate humans have a 94% death rate, but we're pretty confident that the last 6% will succumb in time.

kyberias• 11 years ago

"73-year-old granddaughter". That is just mind-blowing.

sevenadrian• 11 years ago

yeah, nuts. I wonder how many generations down she has met.

The oldest person in the world never holds that title for very long

Related Stories