Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by glimcat on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @02:35AM (#2806248)

Because when you mix a lot of random variables together, the variance tends to decrease.

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by lkozma on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @04:53AM (#2806570)

Exactly, and the variance of the maximum will decrease even faster than the variance of the mean.

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by sebkomianos on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @11:26AM (#2807755)

This is very interesting, can you point me/us to any explanations about it?

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by shabble on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @06:03PM (#2809661)

I'd guess at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem - Combined distributions tend towards Gaussian (bell-curve)

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