Both morbid and fascinating.
Have you ever wondered how and when you will die? Would you rather know, or just let life take its toll and perish at some unpredictable moment? Statistician Nathan Yau from Flowing Data used data from the Social Security Administration to create an interactive graph showing when you are most likely to die.
To use the graph, you can select your gender and age and watch little circles drop. Each circle represents a possible age at which you might die. As the circles accumulate, you will see that they create a curve of data points that centers on a new life expectancy. However, just because you have an average of 33 years left to live based on statistics, doesn’t mean that you might not still get hit by a bus tomorrow.
SEE ALSO: We’re Living Longer Lives, But Not Healthier Ones
If you increase the simulation age, you’ll notice that the number of years that you have left decreases. But, if you set it high enough, something different happens.
“Life expectancy increases and the balls tend to drop farther past the overall life expectancy point. That is, as you shift into later years, life is like, ‘Hey, you're pretty good at this aging game. Better than most. You're probably going to live longer than the average person,’” according to an article Yau wrote for Flowing Data.
If knowing when you’re going to die isn’t enough, don’t despair — Yau has also created a graph showing what is apt to kill you. This graph uses data from the Underlying Cause of Death database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how people have died between 1999 and 2014.
Screenshot from Flowing Data Graph
The simulation lets you enter your age, gender and race and will calculate your likelihood of dying from particular causes at different points in your life. Congenital, perinatal and external causes are most likely for infants and children, but cancer jumps forward quickly after that, and circulatory causes take the lead after 80 years or so.
“This surprised me, because it seems like cancer would be the leading cause just going off general news. This is certainly true up to a certain age, but get past that and your heart can only keep going for so long,” said Yau in the article explaining the graph.
Watch the simulation a number of times and you will see the likelihood percentages vary even with the same initial conditions.
Although these graphs are fascinating, you only live once so you can’t base your life on a probability — you might be one of the edge cases. On the other hand, it might be time to consider getting life insurance if you haven’t already.
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