Sorry, I do not have Twitter! I write & read on ‘bark’, but had to compromise a bit in using the internet & reach out to more people while saving mango, guava, & chico trees.
Dilip, I just do not understand your ‘death rate’ logic ! You r probably aware of ‘the rule of 72’. If u have your money (say $1000 one time) at 2% in the bank, it will double in 36 years. (72 divided by 2). $2000 in 36th yr, $4000 in 72nd yr. That’s at 2% In mutual funds (there are a variety of investment mixes available in India, inc a publicly-owned one I like with consistent growth), at 8%, the $1000 would double every 9 years: $1000= $2000 in 9 year, $4000 in 18th yr, $8000 in 27th yr, $16,000 in 36th, $32,000 in 45th, $64,000 in 54th, $128,000 in 63rd, $256,000 in 72nd yr. Huge difference caused by higher interest rate over long time, both key factors. Re. POPULATION: Population increase used to be around 3% in some countries = doubling every 24 yrs. Kenya’s was among the highest, close to or above 5% at one point. Most Western countries have experienced population growth rates of under 1% = doubling every 72 yrs ! So, one sees the dilemmas here: for economic growth, Western countries need Third world markets ! Hypothetically, the West can only eat so many fish & chip platters or hamburgers ! Of course, in North America, we eat about 5 times the volume of food that was eaten in the 1880s in lbs.. I do not have the exact figures before me at present (but not the main point). Most economists argue that Western markets have ‘saturated’, not much room for growth. Automated production systems & computerized decision-making are also making manual labour extinct, shrinking the workforce. Govts may have to consider a guaranteed annual income unrelated to work. Even if Western countries consume double the present food intake between ‘da-lips’, (excuse the onomatopoeia), 😂, it is not enuf consumption to have significant growth in the production-consumption cycle. Personally, I actually eat much less than I used to, & I am much more careful re. the content of the food I eat, & I am much more healthy. I occasionally make ‘chapatis’, but from organic brown flour (not bleached GMOs). It is healthy, in my view. Where would u go, Dilip, with this consumption model/perspective & interpretation, as I am not sure what you r driving at with your statistics & logic re. DEATHS. Are u stating there is a net drop in population? I do not know if you r being facetious in your article, as u do also have a wicked sense of humour, backed often by overkill use of statistics going over the heads of readers, but my sense is that u mean something serious, & I do not fully get it. As Oscar (Wilde), Dilip, r u being cerebral for being cerebral sake? Leave the plebeians scratching their heads ? I really dunno ! ! I have followed u (not literally) since u left Mumbai/Bombay University. I recall I was doing research at Bombay University library when a graduate student in the UK.. I was in the basement, damp, only 2 small lightbulbs, & I saw a volume relating to ‘partition 1947’ on a top dusty top shelf. I pushed the ladder there, & reached for the volume. It fell thru my hands as ash & down to the floor. I told the librarian & I apologized. He said most of those books, many over 100 yrs old, are eaten inside by white & red ants. The pages were plain soft paper, no plastic coating. Years later I visited again. State-of-the-art library, air-climatized, etc.. However, most of the books & antique collections were by then already moved to Duke University in the U.S., paid by a Ford Foundation grant. I understand many archival materials have been photographed & are in online collections. As an alumni of any university in the world university system association, u (with an active alumni library membership), can access today most materials (except very old archives) from your ‘home office’. Check it out. Anyway, have a good weekend, & keep the synapses between the brain cells acutely active ! Sorry, this is long: I had no time to make it short, have to work on my précis-writing skills. - Ivan D. Ivan D. Pereira Montreal & Ottawa, Canada Sent from my iPhone > On May 20, 2022, at 16:10, Dilip D'Souza <[email protected]> wrote: > > May 20 > > I'm still puzzling over why a remark about life expectancies brought up a > long ago memory of restringing tennis racquets. Maybe you'll be able to > explain that to me. But more seriously, I've been trying to understand what > connects a country's population, its life expectancy, and the number of > deaths it sees in a year. At first glance there's a straightforward link > that threads them together - except that it doesn't, or not quite. > > It's one of those mathematical/statistical challenges that I love musing > over. I've been musing since I started writing this article and I expect to > keep musing for a while more. Muse with me, won't you? Or if you think this > is simple stuff, write and tell me. > > Life expectancies and tennis racquets, > https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/life-expectancies-and-tennis-racquets-11652991319688.html > > cheers, > dilip > > PS: And ok, am I just clutching at straws for the connection to tennis? > > --- > > Life expectancies and tennis racquets > > > When I was so much younger than today, I played tennis more regularly than > I do today. And we amateur players heard of a simple formula that seemed > very reasonable. Re-string your tennis racquet, it went, as many times in a > year as you play in a week. > > It made sense and was easy to remember. Those days, I played at least four > times a week, so I'd restring four times a year, or about every three > months. If I played more often, the restringing happened more often. When > my playing slacked off - as it has in recent years - so did the > restringing. It wasn't that I kept track of these things. I didn't need to. > The more often I played, the quicker the strings got noticeably less taut. > > Sometime then, while a bunch of friends and I were playing and enjoying the > game, we heard of a new formula - "the current wisdom", said the guy who > regularly strung my racquet. I don't now recall the new formula, though it > wasn't as easy and intuitive as the old one. > > But whatever it was and however often you played, it suggested more > frequent stringing than the old one did. Which figured, because the new > formula was concocted by the Professional Racquet Stringers' Association or > some such. Naturally it was in such an Association's interest that we > string our racquets more often. > > Now I'm not fully sure why an email message after my last column here got > me thinking about tennis and restringing. Maybe it will be clearer by the > time I finish writing this column. Or maybe not. Who knows. > > You will remember that my last column was about questions that India's > announced Covid death toll raises ( > https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/whos-right-about-covid-numbers-11652376232691.html). > I started it by stating that about 10 million Indians die every year, a > number, I wrote, that nobody really contests. > > Except ... the next day, there was a message in my Inbox. "I don’t > understand your figure of 10 million Indians dying per year", wrote an > alert reader (you know who you are). "An average human lifetime is maybe > about 70 years, and so, very roughly, about 1 person in 70 should die each > year. If you divide 1.4 billion by 70, you get about 20 million." > > The alert reader raises a good point. If this reasoning is not immediately > clear, though, approach it this way. > > Consider the fictional country Freedonia. It is populated by a million > people who sport large moustaches and their life expectancy is just one > year. This makes them grouchy, because as a little reflection will tell > you, all Freedonians alive today will be dead within a year. i.e. Divide > Freedonia's population - one million - by the Freedonian life expectancy - > one year - to get the number of deaths in a year there - one million. You'd > be grouchy too. > > Ah, but one day Freedonia totally revamps its health care system and > mandates a better diet for all its people. It takes a while, but > eventually, these measures bear fruit: life expectancy in Freedonia doubles > to two years. Some more reflection will tell you that everyone in Freedonia > will be dead in two years. Half - the ones born a year ago - will die this > year. The other half, the ones born this year - will die next year. Again, > divide the country's population by life expectancy, two years, to get the > annual death toll: 500,000 this year, 500,000 the next. > > Freedonia keeps at it, and its life expectancy keeps rising. Gets up to > four, and only 250,000 die each year. Reaches 20, and the country sees > about 50,000 deaths annually. By the time Freedonia has pushed its life > expectancy all the way to 70 years, its population has also exploded to > about 1.4 billion and maybe it's not so fictional any more. It's now > renamed India. Still, the same general rule applies. Divide 1.4 billion by > 70 to get the yearly expected death count: 20 million. > > Why then is India's announced annual death toll half of that? > > Faced with this question, you wonder: is there something wrong with this > rule? It's hard to imagine what, because on the face of it, it is so simple > and intuitive. Well, do other countries' figures follow the rule? Take a > look at a few at random. Remember that these are pre-pandemic figures; > covid death counts skew these in different ways. > > Consider Australia: population 26 million, life expectancy 83 years. The > expected annual count of deaths is thus 26m/83, or about 313,000. Actual > count: 161,000, or about half the expected number. > > What about Brazil? Population: 213 million, life expectancy 76 years. > Divide 213m by 76 and we expect 2.8m deaths per year. Instead, the number > is 1.66m deaths. Just over half, again. > > The USA? Population 330m, life expectancy 77 years. The annual death count > should be 4.29m. Instead, it is about 2.85m. > > Or take China, with its population of about 1.41 billion and life > expectancy of 76.91 years. The expected annual death count: 18.33 million. > But the actual number is about 10.24 million. > > In all these countries, India among them, the actual count of deaths is > significantly less than the expected count that we calculate from > population and life expectancy. So did I, just by chance, pick the only > five countries in which this is the case? Or is this just normal? > > Well, here are the numbers from five more countries at random: > > Madagascar: population 27.7m, life expectancy 67.04y, expected annual > deaths 413k - but actual annual deaths are only 160k. > > Iceland: 366,000, 82.56y, 4433 - but actually 2275. > > Nigeria: 206m, 54.69y, 3.77m - but 2.4m. > > Ecuador: 17.6m, 77y, 229K - but 90K. > > Laos: 7.3m, 67.92y, 107k - but 46K. > > Believe me, this applies across the board. In fact, for the world as a > whole, these are the numbers: > > World: 7.6733b, 72.74y, 105.5m - but 57.3m. > > All of which leaves two broad questions. This is in some ways an unusual > column for me, because instead of trying to answer them myself, I want to > leave you with those questions too. So here they are: > > First, what's going on with all these figures? Is there an explanation for > why annual deaths across the world are much lower than life expectancy > numbers would suggest? > > I don't know the answer. Perhaps there is another way to consider this > data, and statisticians or demographers can explain it. Maybe it is an > obvious explanation. Still, for the time being I'm deliberately not > searching for it because I'm trying to explain and understand it myself. > For example, are there reasons for the decline of death rates that are > separate from the increase in life expectancies? Hypothetically, if a > country has a very low life expectancy - if not quite as low as Freedonia's > one year - would this difference be smaller? If a country has a very small > population, would that have any bearing on the difference? > > Second, what's the connection, if any, to my experience with my tennis > racquets? For example, is there an analogy between longer life expectancies > and longer intervals between restringing a racquet? Something strikes me as > similar in both situations, but I can't put my finger on exactly what. > > Still, it always seems to me that that is the great appeal of mathematics, > whether you're serious about it or just a dabbler. There's charm in those > connections. > > -- > My book with Joy Ma: "The Deoliwallahs" > Twitter: @DeathEndsFun > Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Dilip's essays" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dilips-essays/CAEiMe8rFi0wX9daUg3qWaTs-zNQA2MPP%2BgjJssBmrU16z_L2GA%40mail.gmail.com.
