How long?

Yesterday, someone asked Dr. Phil how he planned to live out his life.  He made an interesting, yet terrifying, revelation that since he has already lived 3/4 of his life and only has that measly 25% left, he's probably going to do whatever the hell he wants!  One quarter left????He's younger than I...Yikes... Sometimes TV (which is supposed to be a form of relaxation) can be quite unnerving!  So I thought I do a little research. Life expectancy and how the nerds do their figuring.. (remember that life expectancy numbers are going to be different depending on who you consult, Dr's, insurance salesmen, car dealers, bankers, ex spouses.......some banking on you living a long time, others hoping you kick off soon)... First I found the formula for calculating this important number..

The life expectancy at age x, denoted , is then calculated by adding up the probabilities to survive to every age. This is the expected number of complete years lived (one may think of it as the number of birthdays they celebrate).

OK, I could easily figure that but decided not to... (WTH) so I found a chart that showed the average life expectancy according to country.  Ahhhh much better.

As with any numbers, being in the green is a hell of a lot better than being in the red. So far, so good.... I live in the right place.  Being a U.S. resident should afford me a life of 80.8 years...not as good for our male counterparts who only average 75.6... I can think of several reasons for the 5 year loss but that's a story for another day.  A move to the north (Canada) might tack on nearly 3 more years for women and men.... it's colder up there, we'd be better preserved.  I'm assuming that eating rice, not wearing shoes in the house and carrying a camera is a good thing! In Japan, it's 86.1 for gals and 79 for guys.... maybe it's also attributed to height.. If you're shorter, there's less of you to go bad!!  If you're a giraffe, elephant or hippo, Africa is the place for you... If you're human, have a bone in your nose and only seen in National Geographic, you're in deep African doo-doo!  You'd better multiply while you can, enjoy carrying things on your head and dance in the nude a lot because you're only around for 31-32 years....
I'm sure there's a moral to this story. The only adage that comes to mind is the, "If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."  I do thank the Lord for the last 59.8 years I've had and each night I ask for 20 more, with an option. I hope he's listening and I really hope he's good at math.!!



Because age is rounded down to the last birthday, on average people live half a year beyond their final birthday, so half a year is added to the life expectancy to calculate the full life expectancy. (This is denoted by with a circle over the "e".)