If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend reading How to Fight Presidents, by one of your former LWT colleagues, Daniel O'Brien. The book is very funny, a quick read, and full of interesting presidential facts.
Jeff, you are always entertaining and I love your work. The young median age back in time was however a result of lots of infants dying. Example. If half the population made it past 12 months and lived to be 100, the median age would be 50. Now we cure the things that killed the infants the median age would be 100. I’m sure you get the idea.
This criticism applies to "life expectancy" estimates, but that's not what was quoted here. He said that the average alive person was 16.7 years old. That just means that there was an equal number of alive people below that age and above that age at that specific time. Which speaks to the fact that people had MUCH larger families back then and population growth was rapid.
Good piece. In the 'Do No Harm' box, I'm less worried about Biden than the full shit show - but I've dreamt of a Sanders presidency - to just once give an alt idea a whirl in the WH. So age is not my issue. I do wonder if the Dems realize how big a deterrent Harris is though. It's not fair to her, but neither is shingles. BTW, I miss your solo podcasts. Not to complain about Wrongthink but I'm an insomniac and prefer one voice over two.
Good analysis of “age is relative” theory. As o e if your readers pointed out, so many babies/infants died long ago that the average age for adults was skewed. But Trump & Biden are both too old to be taking on this demanding job, in my opinion. Aunt Anch
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, we all know the only people you're allowed to joke about these days are "cisgendered" white males. Joke about my grandma, I'm comin' after ya. Maybe goths but they're a dying breed and we all know goth chose them, they didn't choose goth. The French, as they would say, pffft.
Great piece, Jeff, as always. It's interesting how many of the comments were about your statistical model. Reading a couple of them reminded me how true it is that 5 out of 4 people misunderstand statistics.
The median age is mostly just determined by the birth rate. For something a little more informative about being "old for your time", try life expectancy at age 20.
Fresh take, and funny as always! Though I think it'd probably be a bit more useful to compare to the average life expectancy over time rather than median age since, as another commenter mentioned, median is influenced by a lot of things, such as fertility rate, which don't really tell us much about how fit a particular old person might be at that time.
If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend reading How to Fight Presidents, by one of your former LWT colleagues, Daniel O'Brien. The book is very funny, a quick read, and full of interesting presidential facts.
"they're one of the last groups you're allowed to joke about (it's really just them, goths, and the French at this point)"
*cries in French*
Jeff, you are always entertaining and I love your work. The young median age back in time was however a result of lots of infants dying. Example. If half the population made it past 12 months and lived to be 100, the median age would be 50. Now we cure the things that killed the infants the median age would be 100. I’m sure you get the idea.
This criticism applies to "life expectancy" estimates, but that's not what was quoted here. He said that the average alive person was 16.7 years old. That just means that there was an equal number of alive people below that age and above that age at that specific time. Which speaks to the fact that people had MUCH larger families back then and population growth was rapid.
Good piece. In the 'Do No Harm' box, I'm less worried about Biden than the full shit show - but I've dreamt of a Sanders presidency - to just once give an alt idea a whirl in the WH. So age is not my issue. I do wonder if the Dems realize how big a deterrent Harris is though. It's not fair to her, but neither is shingles. BTW, I miss your solo podcasts. Not to complain about Wrongthink but I'm an insomniac and prefer one voice over two.
Good analysis of “age is relative” theory. As o e if your readers pointed out, so many babies/infants died long ago that the average age for adults was skewed. But Trump & Biden are both too old to be taking on this demanding job, in my opinion. Aunt Anch
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, we all know the only people you're allowed to joke about these days are "cisgendered" white males. Joke about my grandma, I'm comin' after ya. Maybe goths but they're a dying breed and we all know goth chose them, they didn't choose goth. The French, as they would say, pffft.
Great piece, Jeff, as always. It's interesting how many of the comments were about your statistical model. Reading a couple of them reminded me how true it is that 5 out of 4 people misunderstand statistics.
The median age is mostly just determined by the birth rate. For something a little more informative about being "old for your time", try life expectancy at age 20.
Very funny...and important point made!
Fresh take, and funny as always! Though I think it'd probably be a bit more useful to compare to the average life expectancy over time rather than median age since, as another commenter mentioned, median is influenced by a lot of things, such as fertility rate, which don't really tell us much about how fit a particular old person might be at that time.