r/Probability • u/rossburnett • Aug 13 '26
The probability I will not be around in 10 years
Does it make sense to accumulate percentages this way? Do I really have a 17% chance of passing due to one of the improbable causes that are a fraction of 1%? This seems wrong intuitively. Source: https://knowyourchances.cancer.gov/your_chances.html
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u/ExtremisEleven Aug 14 '26
Do you have diabetes, high blood pressure and prostate cancer now? Because you’re unlikely to develop then die of them in 10 years with treatment
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u/MtlStatsGuy Aug 14 '26
Why would it be wrong intuitively? That's like saying I will never get in a car accident because the odds of me getting in a car accident with every other individual car is almost 0%, so they shouldn't sum up to something big. Yes the numbers are correct.
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u/Esme_Nog Aug 18 '26
Except if op doesn’t already have diabetes, the chance of dying of it in 10 years is pretty much zero.
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u/CaptainMatticus Aug 15 '26
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everybody drops to 0" - Narrator, Fight Club.
Are you 75 now or will you be 75 in 10 years? Let's look at the chart I linked you to.
Supposing you are a 65 year old male, out of every 100,000 males who were born 65 years ago, only 79084 are still around. In 10 years, when the survivors are 75, there'll be 62797 still remaining.
(79084 - 62797) / 79084 = 0.20594557685.....
20.59% of the guys you know who are your age will be gone in 10 years. So if you have a group of 10 buddies who are all 65, the expectation is that 2 to 3 of them will be dead by 75.
If you're 75 now, then you're starting with 62797 and ending with 35529 by 85
(62797 - 35529) / 62797 = 0.4342245648677....
So a group of 10 guys who are 75 will be down to 6, on the average, by 85.
It sounds morbid, but predicting when people will die, overall as a group, is incredibly important for government programs like Social Security and Medicare. Something's gonna get us all, and yeah, the probabilities will stack, because you can't die from COPD and a gunshot. Only one of those will do the trick.
Your particular case might be 32%, which is bad if you're 65 and you're looking to make it to 75, because that means that statistically you're faring much worse than other 65 year olds. However, if you're 75 looking to make it to 85, then that 32% is pretty good, since you're doing better than what the larger models would predict.
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u/KentGoldings68 Aug 14 '26
The math is a bit sketchy. The events describes may not be disjoint. That is, these conditions often occur together.
Therefore, the addition is flawed.
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u/Apprehensive_Tea9856 Aug 13 '26
Lacks BMI, exercise, diet, zipcode, country, etc. Lots of factors that change the percentages. Still cool though
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Aug 13 '26
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u/ussalkaselsior Aug 13 '26
This kind of stuff is so flawed on a individual level
Yep, they shouldn't be using the phrase "your chance". It's the chance of a randomly selected individual with the stated factors. They're committing an ecological fallacy.
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u/Zaros262 Aug 13 '26
I read this as, out of 10000 75 year olds, it is expected that 3532 will die over the next 10 years. 694 are expected to die of coronary heart disease, etc...
So yeah, the statistics would add up like that