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        riddles >> hard >> STATISTIC LIES
        
(Message started by: drdedos on Jul 29^th, 2002, 5:39pm)

Title: STATISTIC LIES
Post by drdedos on Jul 29^th, 2002, 5:39pm

"The religious keeper of the web page The Premature Death of Rockstars argues that rock stars do not live as long as the general population. He states that the average age at death of rock stars is 36.9 and 75.8 for the general population. What is wrong with this use of these statistics? This is an illustrated example of lying with statistics."

People who are rock stars are only rock stars until a certain age. They might retire or change occupation afterwards. So there may be plenty of people who were rock stars when they were younger and continued living long healthy lives, but changing occupations later in their lives, so when they die, they are no longer considered rock stars.

I assume that when they calculated the average age of death of rock stars, they only included "rock stars" who die young while they are still rock stars. They did not include all people who are rock stars at some point in their lives.

Title: Re: STATISTIC LIES
Post by adfgvx on Jul 29^th, 2002, 9:34pm

Consider this: How old is rock music? Has it been around long enough for many rock stars to die of old age? That's the problem.

Title: Re: STATISTIC LIES
Post by nyee on Jul 31^st, 2002, 9:13am

It's because you can't get their age of death until they die. Most rock stars are still alive. A lot of them may be older than 36, but they haven't died so they aren't factored into the mean. So the 36.4 is the mean of all rock stars who died young, whereas the mean of the general population is more balanced.

Title: Re: STATISTIC LIES
Post by johnP on Aug 1^st, 2002, 5:39am

Anyway, the page only counts premature deaths (accidents, terminal illness, suicides etc), it doesn't include natural deaths for rock stars. If it was compared with the rate of premature deaths in the general population, it might have been interesting. The page isn't comparing the same numbers.

Title: Re: STATISTIC LIES
Post by Justin Bailey on Aug 6^th, 2002, 12:59pm

Well, here's what I think. . .

It's misleading to say that rock stars die earlier than the rest of the population because the fact that they are rock stars has nothing to do with their death. Basically, he's saying "If you become a rock star, then your chances of dying early are greater" which is false. Look at the top causes of death for rock stars 1) Heart attack 2) Drugs 3) Misc. Medical 4) Suicide 5) Auto/cycle crash 6) Cancer and 7) Plane crash. Most of those can be attributed to drug addiction and depression. The only one that couldn't be linked to drugs are plane crashes. So, what he should be saying is "If you are addicted to drugs and/or severely depressed, then your chances of dying early are greater" which makes a little more sense :)

One could say that becoming a rock star made them fly in more planes, therefore increasing their chances of getting in a plane wreck, but that wasn't even in the top five.

It somewhat like the "Spelling ability increases as your feet get bigger" where feet getting bigger have nothing to do with it, but the fact that your getting older does ;) Your feet getting bigger has an indirect relationship with your spelling ability increasing, just like becoming a rock star has to do with death.