According to stats prof David Spiegelhalter, whom I met for the first time only this year, “Our survival is governed by the “force of mortality” – the wonderfully archaic expression for the chance of dying each year. Each year, an average adult ages, this unavoidable force increases by around 9%, so that every eight years your chance of not making your next birthday roughly doubles.”
He is thus wondering whether he will live longer than his 20-year old cat (that’s 100 in cat years, I believe). Our cat, died at 15 (equiv to 75), I think I’d like to get somewhere closer to Spiegelhalter’s cat’s longevity and sidestep the Schrodinger risk…
via BBC News – Will I live longer than my cat?