"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
But will there necessarily be any correlation between these two events.
[birth and death]?

There doesn’t need to be. The fact that birthdays arent even distributed
is all you need.

That should be "blindingly obvious" even to a ten-year-old at school.

But then you clearly are a slow learner :-(

Because there are more babies born during a certain time of year, will
there necessarily be more deaths at that *same* time of year?

Not the same time of year, the same DAY. Basic statistics.

Maybe I should spell that out more explicitly.

Given that some specific days of the year have more births than
others, just the fact that they have more is enough to skew the
stats with the death occurring on the same day of the year.

I can see that [highly fictitious example] if there are 10 births on January
(of any year) and 1 birth each of all the other days (of any year), then 1
January will be the birthday of lots of people whereas any other date will
be the birthday of just one person.

But why does that mean that a person who is born on 1 January will be any
more likely also to die on 1 January of a subsequent (*) year than on any
other day of that same subsequent year, just because lots of *other* people
were born on that day? Is there some biological property that makes a person
more likely to die n*365.25 days from their birth, for various integer
values of n, than on any other day? It's probably very obvious to you, but
it's not to me. Your statement "Given that some specific days of the year
have more births than others, just the fact that they have more is enough to
skew the stats with the death occurring on the same day of the year." *Why*
is it enough to skew the stats?

The problem with something being "very obvious" is that it's sometimes
difficult to explain to someone else *why* it is obvious.


(*) I'm excluding neonatal deaths.