Flowing Data has created a visualization showing the distribution of death ages within a group of people who share the same age and sex, using death statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Social Security Administration. Instead of reporting a single average life expectancy, the tool calculates the chance of surviving each year of life using real data. It then shows the range of possible ages at death for a group starting at the same age. For example, for 19-year-old women in 2025, the visualization simulates many lifespans, each represented by a dot that moves year by year along a curve showing the real-world probability of surviving to the next year. At each age, the dot faces the chance of dying based directly on that probability—like rolling dice weighted by real survival odds. When a simulated “death” occurs, the dot drops and is marked as a tick on the x-axis. The spread of these ticks reflects the distribution of expected death ages for women who are 19 in 2025.
Visualizing the Distribution of Lifespans
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