# The world is getting better? - "200 years of history"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 19, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002 "2009-05-19T19:36:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Wakinyan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wakinyan/32/352_2.png) [@Wakinyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wakinyan)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002/1 "2009-05-19T19:36:12Z")

</div>

Have you seen [this](http://www.flixxy.com/worldwide-life-expectancy-income-changes.htm)? - Interesting representation on how the world has developed, in regards of life expectancy and health. Nice application he have there.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002/2 "2009-05-19T20:59:14Z")

</div>

Man I want that toy ☹

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2009, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002/3 "2009-05-20T03:40:18Z")

</div>

[This graph](http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/images2/Life_Expect_Long.gif) is a bit better testament to the output of the Age of Reason.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2009, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002/4 "2009-05-20T04:11:42Z")

</div>

> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> [This graph](http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/images2/Life_Expect_Long.gif) is a bit better testament to the output of the Age of Reason.

It should be noted that until the modern era, the distribution of the age at death was strongly bimodal, with a high infant mortality, a reasonably low youth and middle-age mortality, and then, of course, full old-age mortality. (‘Bimodal’ means a graph would have two peaks, meaning there are _two_ numbers or ranges of numbers that are almost equally common (the mode). This is the classic ‘[bathtub curve](http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue21/hottopics21.htm)’. Bimodal distributions don’t play well with methods to get a single number for an average.) The high infant mortality throws people, because the naïve arithmetic mean used to determine a single number for life expectancy implies a lot of 20- or 30-year-olds were dying off back then. Obviously not the case. Remember that the Founding Fathers were living well into their 70s and 80s back in the 1800s, well before modern medical practice.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![audient](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@audient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audient)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-is-getting-better-200-years-of-history/497002/5 "2009-05-20T12:16:29Z")

</div>

> [@wolfman](#):
>
> Man I want that toy ☹

[gapminder](http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/)

but make sure you’ve got your real work done first.