Try My New Actuarial Calculator

Please give my new actuarial calculator a try. Sorry for its simplicity, but my JavaScript ability does not get very deep. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Certainly is easy to use. Since it is your area of expertise I trust the accuracy. Is this something you are going to leave available at one of the sites? As allways Wiz you provide so much easily available information.

Quote: kenarman

Certainly is easy to use. Since it is your area of expertise I trust the accuracy. Is this something you are going to leave available at one of the sites? As allways Wiz you provide so much easily available information.

Thanks. I think I'll leave it on my mathproblems.info site for now. I'm thinking of bringing back a personal homepage, where I'll move miscellaneous things like that to.

There is other stuff I've found on the net that asks questions like your weight and how long your parents lived to. Pretty similar result for me, though.

I better get on with the gaming, not much time left!

Interesting. I have a .05% chance of living to 105 (1 in 2,000). This is actually better than my chances of drawing four to a royal (1 in 2,765). I wonder which will happen first?

Quote: Ayecarumba

Interesting. I have a .05% chance of living to 105 (1 in 2,000). This is actually better than my chances of drawing four to a royal (1 in 2,765). I wonder which will happen first?

4 to a royal... you'll have more attempts at it than living to 105...

Quote: Wizard

Please give my new actuarial calculator a try. Sorry for its simplicity, but my JavaScript ability does not get very deep. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Will future versions of this calculator be able to consider additional criteria, such as risk factors?

Quote: thecesspit

4 to a royal... you'll have more attempts at it than living to 105...

hehe, good one.

Um, I really wouldn't pay attention to an actuarial calculator that doesn't take ANYTHING other than sex into account.

I mean, doesn't being a non-smoker count any more? What about being a non-drinker?

That SSA actuarial table is all I could find. If someone can show me a better one, please do. For now, you can make your own adjustments for your own situation.

Quote: Wizard

Please give my new actuarial calculator a try. Sorry for its simplicity, but my JavaScript ability does not get very deep. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Kind of fun, but if you would like a suggestion I would say put in a feature where you can reverse it. Say you put in your age and 50% and it tells you where you will make it to. Or do it only for 50% maybe.

Why do I have a 75% chance of living to 75, but only 35% of living to 80? What happens between 75 and 80? Yet if I was 75 now, I have an 80% chance of living to 80. It doesn't make sense.

Quote: EvenBob

Why do I have a 75% chance of living to 75, but only 35% of living to 80? What happens between 75 and 80? Yet if I was 75 now, I have an 80% chance of living to 80. It doesn't make sense.

It reminds me of the old story about the man celebrating his 106th birthday. The newspaper reporter covering the event said, "I hope you're around another year so we can cover your 107th birthday." The elderly man replied, "Oh, I'm sure I'll be around for another year. I checked the actuarial tables, and nobody dies between 106 and 107."

I would have expected the probability of living to exactly you life expectancy would be 50%.

Quote: pacomartin

I would have expected the probability of living to exactly you life expectancy would be 50%.

Its 50%, not 35. It still doesn't make sense.

I found this calculator (http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/calcs/n_expect/main.aspon) MSN that asks a lot more questions. Quite different results your calculator comes up with 81.3 years for me and the MSN calculator comes up with 100 years. I am sure that it has nothing to do with the site pushing retirement saving products :)

Quote: EvenBob

Why do I have a 75% chance of living to 75, but only 35% of living to 80? What happens between 75 and 80? Yet if I was 75 now, I have an 80% chance of living to 80. It doesn't make sense.

That doesn't make sense. You'll have to give me your age now for me to find the flaw.

Quote: pacomartin

I would have expected the probability of living to exactly you life expectancy would be 50%.

You're confusing the mean and the median. Let's look at my situation as an example. I'm a 45-year-old male. My life expectancy is 78.11 years, yet I have a 50.04% chance of making it to age 80.



My age at death will be like throwing a dart at this graph. Notice how the left tail is a lot fatter than the right. That means my probability of death right now is quite low. However, as I get older, the probability of death in the next year will keep getting higher. For example, for a 45-year old male the probability of surviving to 46 is quite high at 99.64%. However, at age 85 the probability of making it to 86 is 89.21% only. It is like nature is saying that I'm likely going to let you get to a certain age, but once you get there, you're supposed to die shortly afterward.

So if a lot of 45-year old men throw darts at this graph, 49.96% will hit between 45 and 79, and 50.04% will hit between 80 and 111. However, the lucky half who make it on the right side of the graph will probably not live much past 80. Once a male reaches 80 he can expect to live 7.78 more years only. Meanwhile, the unlucky half who don't make it to 80 die over the whole range from 45 to 80. So it is the young deaths that pull down average life expectancy.

As an example of how the mean and median are different, suppose we add two more deaths to the sample. One death at 46 and one at 81. The probability of making 80 doesn't change, but the mean remaining years at age 45 would go down.

I think graphing data is always a good way to help understand what is going on. Same goes for using a graph to help with an explanation.

So I think in this case, one graph may be worth, well not a thousand, but quite a few posts !

Quote: Wizard

It is like nature is saying that I'm likely going to let you get to a certain age, but once you get there, you're supposed to die shortly afterward.

Damned house edge! And no comps, either.

Quote: mkl654321

Damned house edge! And no comps, either.

Blame the "Man in the Sky."