I had my 20th high school reunion this week. Many of the things I’d like to blog about, I can’t, since a lot of the old high school gang reads Muttroxia. I’ll switch to one morbid train of thought, for one of the coldest posts I’ve ever written.
We’ve had four people from my class die, out of approximately 500. That’s an 0.8% death rate, over 20 years. That seems like it’s very low to me, so I tried to figure it out.
I looked at Social Security Administration data. I think if you divide the age=38 survival rate into the age=18 survival rate, that would mean the probability of surviving to 38 given that you had already made it to 18. I get 97.98% survival, or 2% death rate. Much higher than our 0.8%.
The CDC tables look similar, from them I get a number of 2.1%, that looks like a unisex cohort.
So our class is dying off more than 2 times slower than normal. Way to go!
Update: I’m told that the class size was closer to 525, and we have an unconfirmed fifth death. Let’s call it 1%. If anyone wants the list of the deceased, email me privately.
Another interesting stat for all of you Fiske alums… I counted at least ten (10) kindergarten classmates at our reunion, and know of a number of others still in the area who did not attend. Run some analysis on that Muttrox!
Moleboy, you knew at least two.
The stats is very basic. I don’t know how to get statistics on other classes, or filter on geography, demographics, socio-economic, etc. I’m pretty sure my older brothers classes had many more deaths, I’ll have to check with them.
or, cross with, say, a high school in a west virginia mining town
I recommend an examination of death rate by school location. For example, cross your class against the graduating class of the same year of South Boston High. (Is that possible?)
who died?
4 out of 500?
On even more of a plus side, I probably didn’t even know them (people were getting diplomas that I’d never ever seen before)
One of the top 5 posts of 2007. We need a Muttrox Hall of Fame for a category. The pizza argument clearly has to be near the top.