"GB" wrote in message
...
On 12/06/2021 14:56, NY wrote:

One person said "More people die on their birthday than any other day.
Why is this?" This was presented as if it were a fact. We had no way of
knowing whether it was indeed the case - it was long before Wkipedia and
articles such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_effect which
describe the effect and give various medical reasons.

We tried all the obvious things like "does this include babies that are
born dead or who die within a few hours" and "does it include
alcohol-related accidents when people do stupid things at their birthday
party". No, we were told. We were over-thinking the problem and
over-complicating it. The reason was blindingly obvious. The question
became really quite smug (to the point that I could see some of my mates
were itching to punch his lights out!) and said that the teacher had
asked the question when he was a lad at school; although he'd never been
asked it before or even thought about it, he got the answer immediately.
He was amazed than none of us could work it out. "Is this true in all
cultures?" "Is it true even if you don't know the date and therefore
whether today is your birthday?" He just smiled smugly and repeated that
we were thinking far too deeply and analytically about it.

Sadly we never did find out the answer: it was left as "I'll let you
think about it. Come and tell me when you eventually work out the answer"
and I never saw him again.

Can anyone think of a logical reason, which doesn't involve
alcohol-related accidents, people who are terminally ill holding out
until their next birthday, depression/suicide "I'm a year older than I
was" etc? Something which is "blindingly obvious" even to a ten-year-old
at school?


If you include deaths immediately after birth, surely that would be enough
to swing the figures?


If deaths were randomly distributed, you'd expect roughly 3 per 1000
deaths on any day of the year.

The neonatal mortality rate in this country is about 3 per 1000 live
births, with a substantial number of those on the day of birth (literally
the birthday).

So, all other things being equal, you'd have a 3 per 1000 chance of dying
on any day of the year, except your birthday when you have to add in
roughly an extra 3 per 1000 chance that you died at birth.

Sorry, but there's no tactful way of explaining that.

I agree with your explanation, But the questioner had ruled it out as
"over-complicating" the issue. He acknowledged that things like neonatal
death would have a small affect, as would psychological things like terminal
patients "holding on" to stay alive until a special event, or people
committing suicide more frequently on their birthday or at Christmas. But
all these perfectly valid effects were negligible compared with "his"
explanation - he said.

If I'd thought at the time, I'd like to have asked him whether people with a
more analytical, questioning approach would be more or less likely to hit on
"his" answer than people who thought more in terms of words and concepts,
rather than statistics and medical explanations. I'd also have asked him
whether everyone in his class worked it out at roughly the same time: was it
some thought process that had been taught at school and which the teacher
was relying on when he asked his class the question.

As an aside, the way he asked the question and responded to questions was a
textbook example of how to alienate your audience and make them want to hit
you. He had a smug attitude of "I know the answer and you don't. I'm amazed
no-one has got anywhere *near* the right answer". Think of Jeremy Beadle
crossed with Gyles Brandreth to get an idea of how insufferably smug and
gleeful he was ;-) I was reminded of the question when I saw a reference
to Gyles Brandreth the other day.