Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A Lesson from Human Mortality Rates

Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates. "What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year?  Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100?  1 in 10,000?  Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the ‘Gompertz Law of human mortality.’ "

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