LEaB is bad statistics because it takes an average of two separated datasets - it's a bimodal distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimodal), and the "average" is not representative of a typical person.
If, in pre-modern times, the true life expectancy was 30 (that is, most people could be expected to live until 30 but not much longer), then that puts humans (with steady food supply, language and the ability to negotiate, medical practices) at worse than wild chimpanzees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Anatomy_and_physiology)! How did this discrepancy arrive? Because we don't count the mortality of young chimps in the same group as the expected lifespan of grown chimps, which gives a better indicator of how long a grown chimp is likely to live.
Mostly, see Life Expectancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy) and note the distinction that even in the Upper Paleolithic, life expectancy for an adult was 54 years old. But you only get that number if you exclude infant mortality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality).
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Re: Bad statistics
Date: 2009-11-06 10:25 pm (UTC)If, in pre-modern times, the true life expectancy was 30 (that is, most people could be expected to live until 30 but not much longer), then that puts humans (with steady food supply, language and the ability to negotiate, medical practices) at worse than wild chimpanzees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Anatomy_and_physiology)! How did this discrepancy arrive? Because we don't count the mortality of young chimps in the same group as the expected lifespan of grown chimps, which gives a better indicator of how long a grown chimp is likely to live.
Mostly, see Life Expectancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy) and note the distinction that even in the Upper Paleolithic, life expectancy for an adult was 54 years old. But you only get that number if you exclude infant mortality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality).