A statistical look at the past 11 months of Carbon County obituaries
The proper way to read obituaries is one at a time, respectfully noting the biographical information that will be clipped and saved by the survivors and descendants of the loved ones who have passed.
But looking at the information of all the obits at once is a different matter. You can get a glimpse of some patterns that show up only in statistics. We took a look at the ages listed in the 206 Carbon County obituaries printed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1 of this year.
Here’s what we found:
| Average (Mean) age of all deaths The sum of all ages divided by 206. |
71 |
| Average age of males | 67.5 |
| Average age of females | 74.4 |
| Median age of all deaths The age where half are older and half are younger |
73 |
| Median age of males | 70 |
| Median age of females | 78 |
| Oldest male | 96 |
| Oldest female | 103 |
There are some caveats about the numbers. First, not everyone who dies here is listed in the obituaries or death notices. Second, the list does not note any difference between people who have lived a lifetime here and moved away shortly before they died, or someone who lived somewhere else and recently moved here. We selected only those obituaries that had Carbon County datelines.
Also, there were a few obits that did not list age and could not be included.
Obits generally do not explain cause of death, so we made no attempt to account for why people of any particular age group passed away.
Charting the mortality
It is interesting to note that half of the females lived to 78 and older. There were only two persons listed who were under age 20, one was a 1-year-old infant, the other was 15.
The chart of deaths by age groups shows where the most people died. It shows that while the numbers increase modestly with age up to age 50, there is a sharp increase in middle age, 50 to 59 years old.
There were 26 deaths listed in that age group, or one-eighth of the population that passed away.
After that, deaths increase gradually with age reaching the peak in the 80 to 89 group and tapering off as there are fewer people left in the very old groups.
The modal age – the most commonly occurring number in the sample – is 84 years old. Here’s an interesting quirk, though: the most commonly listed age for males was 67, and for females it was 57.
That’s because the mode in a sample such as this, with ages spread among 206 people ranging from 1 to 103, is going to be small. So if there are five females age 57 and four age 84, and five males age 67 and four 84, you get a modes of 57 and 67 by sex, and 84 for the whole. (Eight is greater than five.)
The reason for this quick survey is that the author, who is 67.5 years old (eek!), proofreads the obits and got curious about the big picture.