The Centenarian

May 25, 2007; An important statistical question about the demography of Supercentenarians is whether their net numbers are increasing exponentially over time (synchronized, say, with the observed rise in the numbers of centenarians) or whether their numbers have remained relatively flat (with a small positive linear slope). Now, Mr. Robert Young, GRG Senior Claims Investigator of Atlanta, GA, and Miguel Quesada have graphed the numbers of Supercentenarians over the last 25 years between [1980 and 2006] to reveal the presence of any obvious trends above. They conclude: “We observe a steady rise from [1980 to 2000] followed by a modest leveling off since the turn of the century. However, missing cases, which are discovered subsequently, can bias these trends. Given that most of the missing cases are from 2000 onward, we speculate that the rise is continuing, albeit at a slower rate. However, we see that, theoretically, Table E, on this website, could easily have been over 100 cases if we could only validate every potential case at the same time. Yet, we notice that the greatest age — 114 — remains the same. Thus, we can conclude that most of the missing cases are for age range [110 - 111] yo.”

Filed under: New on September 18th, 2007