Or, say, there are two rural counties that are very similar but one has an old folks home and the other doesn't, so many of the old people in the two-county region end up dying in just one of the counties. What impact does that have on life expectancy statistics by county?
And then a reader sent me a simple question:
I have a numeracy question for you because I don't know anyone else to ask. I have been thinking about life expectancy which I can easily determine for myself and for my wife. I know that she will probably outlive me, but how do I compute the probability that she will do so? (Yes, I know that it is strictly incorrect to assign a probability to a single event, but if we had 100 similar mes and 100 similar hers, then what?)If you are less baffled by these matters than me, please comment below.