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Re:Why so many celebrities have died in 2016 by sandebert on Sunday April 24, 2016 @02:32PM (#11560753)
Surprisingly often I find myself thinking about poker in everyday life (even while not playing poker, that is). And surprisingly often I find something I learned in poker is also applicable in life outside the game. In this case, the concept of variance comes to mind. Basically that values (for instance number of deaths of celebrities) are spread out. Sometimes there are more, and sometimes there are less. And that's just how it is, it doesn't automatically mean there's a trend change either way.

Lots of pages out there to read about it, here's one that might give more insight than my comment: http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/other/variance/

Re:Why so many celebrities have died in 2016 by derefr on Sunday April 24, 2016 @02:37PM (#11560775)
Or, from another field: it might look like some stock investors are "hot" or "cold", but that doesn't mean that investing with a currently-"hot" investor will give you any better odds. The variance in the market is high; sometimes people get a streak of wins without that being any more than luck.

(Some people, like Warren Buffet, do more; but if you know enough about their strategies to differentiate between the people getting lucky and the people "playing smart", you know enough to do your investing yourself.)

Re:Why so many celebrities have died in 2016 by Lost_BiomedE on Sunday April 24, 2016 @03:04PM (#11560869)
Day trading is similar. I have even read poker books to help with my day trading. There are tons of knowledge-of-self and life lessons within both.

In this case, I think we have both variance and a cycle. Given the age range of many bigger than life stars, the current cycle is just gearing up. Within that cycle we will have clustering and variance.