Longest Reign!!

You know the saying: lies, damned lies, and statistics. We are dealing with people, and special cases of people. Statistics shouldn't be generically applied to someone like the Pharaoh.

But as I pointed out, life expectancy is not the mean age at death, and anyway that formula only applies to normal distributions, which mortality is definitely not. A pyramid is hardly a normal distribution.

Moreover, even if the technique were valid here, if you take any sample, and categorise the results, the extreme (indeed any rare) values of the underlying population will not be represented. If a sample category contains no elements, that does not prove that the category is not represented in the general population.

And with regard to this being a historical forum, you're the one who introduced the mathematical concepts, not me.

 What you expect me to spoon feed you by converting the crude pyramids into a normal distribution distribution . You are crazy mate, I have no time to do that in a historical forum.  The pyramids  act as a raw source of information from which I can very well estimate the standard deviation (itself a less accurate measure than the variance).

using this simple formula

where u = life expentancy, N is the number sampled.

Originally posted by Constantine XI Originally posted by Maju They were less stressed and therefore they lived longer.  Darn right, if I sat on a throne all my life and didn't even have to go to the effort of wiping my own backside (fact of life for the Pharaohs) you can be sure as anything I wouldn't be suffering a premature death from stress or overwork!

Of course there might be the occasional assassination to worry about

Obviously, but what is it? Otherwise it could well be doubted that you know what you are talking about, couldn't it?

You overlooked my other question again, too.

Don't worry, I can handle statistical analysis.

  Apparently this statement seems to be correct on the surface but that is just apparent, why?? Having a lot of food doesn't mean you are well nourish, eating too much food is a form of malnutrition. Infact the food weren't that good, the elite had a lot of food but bad food mostly. For example the pharaohs had their teeth worn out by the consumption of bread full of tiny peebles.. The ancient egyptians hardly understand the concept behind a diet (which a rather modern concept which come by with science). So the elites suffered of malnutrition just like the poor if not worst. It can be argued who of the poor or the elite has the best diet. So don't confused the amount of food available as being an indicator for being well nourished.

  Further do you think the elites actually had better hygienes than the poor. Proper hygiene is a rather modern concepts too. You know the barbarians had better hygienes than the romans, Romans cities were filthy and the Gauls sacking romes would die of diseases (whereas barbarian villages were amasingly clean with proper waste disposal). When you argue you should not think as it is now but as it was. Nowadays the better educated wealthy people actually behave more like the poor of the past (with balance diet, restricting the amount of food they eat) and whereas the poor behaves like the elites of the past eating way too much food thus suffering from diseases associated with over-nutrition.