Relevance of the question to current US politics is obvious, I was discussing whether McCain’s advanced age should be a factor in choosing who to vote for in the general election, as I would guess there is a strong chance that his VP might have to complete his term for him. But how high? 1%, 10%? It occurs to me that this should probably be answerable at least in a general sense, as life insurance companies and such must actually keep statistical records on various demographic group’s mortality as a function of time.
Note I don’t want to discuss McCain’s situation specifically, both because that seems likely to get the thread moved (there’s already a GD thread about his health) and because I think trying to factor in too many of the specifics of anyone person (long-lived mother, past history of Melanoma and smoking, etc.) are likely to make a scientific answer less possible.
So the question is: What are the chances that a generic 72 year-old American Male with no known severe health problems will survive for four or eight years?
Just to be clear, McCain is not a “generic 72 year-old American Male”. I think you will find the probabilities quite different for people at different ends of the socio-economic scale. If you want to know about McCain, you need to ask about probabilities for people in his demographic-- as closely matching it as possible.
While were at it, we might factor in his four years in a POW camp, and definitely figure in his history of cancer. (Course, Vice President Cheney’s ticker probably should’ve quit on him long ago. . . .)
If you’re going to add all that, you may as well throw in “full access to the most advanced medical care available, cost no object.” Because the President isn’t going to die from pneumonia he didn’t get treated in time.
Which is why I’m trying to avoid getting into the minutia of McCain’s personal history. Other then his broad demographic groups (gender, race, socio-economic class, etc), I think this thread is much likely to end with a factual answer if we don’t try and factor in whether he’s had his wisdom teeth out and the like.
I found this, which gives the probability of a person of a given age surviving one year. Seems like what I’m looking for should be derivable from that. If I take the chance of survival for one year at 72, times the chance of survival for one year at 73 I should get the chance of survival for two years at 72 right? Using that method (and rounding) I get an 85% chance of survival for four years at 72.
I’ll wait a bit to see if people think that’s the correct method to use (prob and stat class was a long time ago for me), and then do the computation for 8 years using more digits.