The odds of a President McCain dying in office
Theres been a lot of talk about McCain dying in office if elected, and a lot of numbers flying around, regarding that. (I’m thinking Matt Damon’s interview)
I work for a firm that employs a lot of actuaries. Out of curiousity, some of my colleagues tried to calculate the odds of McCain dying in office, if elected.
The odds of a 72 year old North American male dying are:
Slightly above 8% within the next four years, and approximately 20% in the next 8 years.
The calculation is based exclusively on his age.
The fact that McCain was a POW has no bearing upon these odds. Research shows that as a group, POWs are no likier to die sooner than the rest of the population. Personally, I believe that if he was tortured for an extended period of time, its bound to have shortened his life somewhat.
Caveats:
These numbers do not take into account the fact that McCain had (and survived) cancer. Nor do they take into account the stress of being President. Both of which are bound to shorten his life.
The tables used to come up with these numbers are intended to calculate odds for very large groups of people, using them for one person will produce extremely inaccurate odds. The margin of error when calculating the odds of a single person’s death is too high for the above numbers to be meaningful in any way. Just thought you might find them interesting.
by Gaddis
by Harris
by Sachs
