Jared Diamond's fear of showering

I like Jared Diamond's column about the risk of dying from slipping while showering. (link) He's talking about repeated taking of small risks. He also differentiates between risk you can control, and risk you can't. He gives fodder to those who won't walk out of their building fearing the falling air conditioner.

I just want to point your attention to one of his minor sentences: "Life expectancy for a healthy American man of my age is about 90. (That’s not to be confused with American male life expectancy at birth, only about 78.)"

He is 75. The average American life expectancy is 78. Is he delusional to think he has 15 more years to live rather than three more years?

Here's where a bit of statistical reasoning helps. Because he has already lived to 75, his life expectancy ought to be above the American average. The fact that he is a healthy 75-year-old gives us useful information--the information that he is probably one of those Americans who live longer than most. If you want to do the math, you should restrict your sample to only those people who have lived to 75, and then compute the distribution of their remaining life. That gets Diamond to his estimate of 15 more years.

Comments

[Ken]

It is why death and injury rates are very much higher in younger drivers, they simply don't realise that the risks taken need to be very low.

[Rob Anderson]

This must be a product of an event that occurred to him that has given him this fear. It is alright to take care but to fear.. it is not right. Living in fear will only make one's life like hiding in the shadows, far from the sunlight of success. Follow the link to know how to overcome fear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1RzqGnNilU

[Tom West]

"Because he has already lived to 75, his life expectancy ought to be above the American average."
You never talked about the American average - only life expectancy at birth.

Your life expectancy always increases with age, because your life expectancy a year ago included those who died within the last year.

[SB]

The Social Security Administration publishes this table to check life expectancy at different ages
https://www.socialsecurity.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

This is from 2007, I could not find a more recent one.

[MF]

The Human Mortality Database at www.mortality.org (free registration) has data up to 2010 which gives a life expectancy of 11.2 years for a 75-year-old man in the US.

Both the HMD and the Social Security figures are 'period' life expectancies - that is, they assume that someone will experience today's mortality rates throughout their life.

Actual ('cohort') life expectancy is likely to be somewhat higher than this, because an individual would expect to benefit from future improvements in mortality (due to better disease treatment etc.)