Seems to me that it should be fairly easy to come up with a fairly accurate formula to predict your lifespan–does anyone have one? So long as we’re not talking “guaranteed,” a close approximation seems feasible to me, based on fairly simple answers to a few questions:
your current age
your current health (life-threaening illness present, life-threatening illness imminent, life-threatening illness foreseeable, clean bill of health)
parents’ ages at death
and maybe one or two other issues I’m omitting here, and you should be able to invent a formula that predicts the single most likely age you’re likely to die, and the probability of that, and the next-most likely ages of your death, to the point where a range of say five years combined would account for maybe 75% or more of your likeliest death years. Is this true?
Right. but I’m asking about eyeballing, not predicting like my job is on the line. How close has anyone come to actuaries’ accuracy with just a few ballpark answers to this type of question?
In the days before the Internet, there was an episode of All in the Family that revolved around a lifespan expectancy quiz in a magazine. I remember taking the quiz for myself, and I think millions of viewers did the same.
That Wharton test is interesting. I am going to, surprisingly, live another 28 years but if I give up sex with my one partner I can live another month. Giving up driving will earn me an extra 18 days. Becoming a keen exerciser will gain me 6 months and drinking 2 or 3 drinks a day will be worth 3 months more.
So my choices are clear; more exercise to offset the driving and more drinking to enable the sex to continue. Sounds good to me. Bottoms up.