Credible in an actuarial sort of way, meaning: Can you make anything of the data? Is there a trend downward? What’s up with 2016? Is there a difference between 40 and 10, out of 350 million?
Yes, the difference is 30.
I will not I’m graphing the absolute numbers and not a rate in these cases. There are so few who die due to lightning strikes at this point, it’s somewhat pointless to calculate a rate.
I agree that 40 is very few
For comparison, here is the ranking table for causes of deaths by age group in U.S. for 2021 (last finalized stats):
One could compare it against the number of 1-4-year-olds who died from COVID in 2021.
It’s annoying that “accidents” are not disaggregated (in that it includes drug ODs with motor vehicle accidents, falls, and yes, lightning strike deaths), but you can see that lightning strike deaths are a puny portion of the whole.
In any case, there are ways to take a very infrequent cause of death and statistically test that it’s becoming less frequent. I do not care enough to any robustness to test it. It is infrequent and definitely a lot less frequent than the 1940s. Huzzah!
OK, so why?
People finally figured out that lightning strikes are hazardous and don’t play outside during them with, say, golf clubs in their hands?
These lightning safety groups finally told a lot of people about what to do in lightning storms?
This also assumes that the frequency of lightning storms annually are somewhat uniform and are are not dropping in lockstep with the deaths. I mean, there is no reason to assume they are not dropping, though maybe climate change is causing this.
Also wondering if people are surviving lightning strikes at a slightly higher rate. That bystanders are saving people who have been struck by lightning.
I found an average of 10% of those struck are killed. No data on this, but they assume this to calculate the average struck by lightning in a year.
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-odds
I mean, the best way not to die by a lightning strike is to avoid getting struck by lightning (same as car accidents and shark attacks). That might be the one thing these pat-on-back groups are doing, warning people not to go outside. Just thinking their focus (or anyone’s focus) should be more on some of these higher incidents on your chart, if avoiding deaths is the goal.
Oh, here are two cool maps of the US with absolute numbers and rates, by state, for a ten-year period:
Seems FL has a shit-ton more lightning storms in the first place. CA, OTOH, does not have that many lightning storms per year. Maybe one in my area per year, if we are “lucky.”
I gave more detail in my earlier post last year: [when I had interviewed the guy actually keeping these stats, John Jensenius]
I’ll grab a few of his graphs (which don’t differ much when you add in 2023)
So, we have these things called cellphones and better weather forecasting…
Seriously, that’s the main thing. People don’t like being out in thunderstorms. We know when/where they will be better now than we did back in the 1940s.
Also, there are defibrillators around to help restart people’s hearts, but I don’t think that’s the real factor. People are being struck less often in the first place.
Most commonly the lightning strike deaths are guys fishing, not golfing. Golfers can get to shelter, but guys out on a boat can’t.
A lot of the stories about lightning strike deaths currently are people who have fewer choices of where they can be, and have no place to shelter. The strikes tend to be before the rain starts (nobody likes being out in the rain) - and you can be struck up to 10 miles from the clouds. Fun!
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And there are way fewer farmers.
Trying to find the original link, but for now, just the image
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That’s a lot more dead actuaries than I thought.
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I assume the average actuary is fatter and more sedentary than the average professional athlete. More likely to be physically disabled and/or have a cancer diagnosis as well.
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It’s all the cocaine and red bull we plow through to get through medicare mid season
I’m curious how the general population would look laid out on that graph
Edit: wow just realized that the actuarial most likely does not represent actuaries but rather the average per actuarial tables
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Might be hard to find, as 538 dropped all of its Sports Coverage last June or so. Archives might also be gone…
But, Google is my friend:
Real question is: why is “actuarial” the standard?
Is it possible that the writer had ties to the profession?
Haha, oh I assumed this was something MPC put together for us. If this is from 538 then surely you’re right.
That said, I bet actuaries are fairly close to the actuarial. Maybe a bit better due to having (on average compared to the overall population) better diet, better access to healthcare, richer, whiter & more Asian.
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If I put it together, I would have redone the graph (and provided -which- table I used…)
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Okay, I went back to the earlier article:
and “actuarial” was described as this:
I then calculated each wrestler’s chances of dying between the ages of 25 (roughly around when his or her career may have started) and however old he or she is/would be in 2014, using actuarial tables from the Social Security Administration. Because health technology has improved significantly, I used a 1990 actuarial table to cover years before 2000, a 2000 table to cover years 2000 to 2009, and a 2010 table to cover 2010 to the present.
This is what they calculated:
I am thinking they used calendar year mortality, male, and no big problem there.
HOWEVER, there are some issues.
This was the methodology:
I collected biographical information (including date of birth and date of death, if applicable) from the Internet Wrestling Database on all WWF wrestlers who are/would be younger than 60 in 2014, and who had at least 20 pay-per-view appearances between WrestleMania I in 1985 and the time the WWF was forced to change its name by the World Wildlife Fund in 2002 — for 203 in all.
There were 203 people in this sample, of which a total of 31 had died. I would put some error bars around stuff, just saying.
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I don’t work in life insurance. The total is a bit confusing. I would assume (from the numbers given) one has a 90% chance of making it from 35 to 40, 84% chance from 40 to 45 etc. Ultimately giving a 44.7% chance of making it to age 60 (or 55.3% chance of dying by 60).
Sample size is too small to really make any conclusions.
How are they counting life years for the wrestlers?
When it says that 1 in 10 age 35-40 died… is that 10 wrestlers or 10 life years… which might only be 2 wrestlers?
Offhand it looks like they might be off by a factor of almost 5 on the wrestlers life-years if there were 203 wrestlers.
Ok, nope, looked at this some more. He’s just saying the chance of dying at any point in the 5 year range.
So the 35-40 really means the probability that a 35 year-old will die before turning 40. 5Q35 I guess.
So I dunno how he’s weighting the “actuarial” across the years. Using the 2020 Social Security table the male Dxs for 35 and 40 are 95,817 and 94,422.
Which, if I remember Course 3 material, means 5Q35 = 1.4559%. But if he’s somehow weighting that with older tables… dunno. Maybe 1.91% is right.
This is pandemic (and non-pandemic) – I’m speaking next week:
Yeah, I know they didn’t put the schedule up yet. Whups.
Here’s a preview:
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