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General smarts
Published in Patrick Rabbitt, The Aging Mind, 2019
We must remember that, since these are average scores, half of all volunteers showed smaller declines. Of course, this is not entirely encouraging because it also means that many changed by slightly more. This seemingly uncomfortable finding is, in fact, reassuring. The amount of change that each of us can expect to experience is not a fixed number, perhaps set by our genes, but is just a probability estimate. It is only a rough guide to the odds of expected change within quite a narrow range. Those interested will find David Spiegelhalter’s mathematical explorations of how to make the best sense of such comparisons cheerfully illuminating. They are wittily described in his book written with Michael Blastland, The Norm Chronicles [7], which I urge you to read. Spiegelhalter and Blastland point out that demographic counts of deaths at different ages that are associated with dangerous habits such as such as skydiving, smoking or immoderate consumption of coffee, alcohol or nitrate-rich sausages do not actually give definite predictions of how long we have left to live but rather only provide data for estimates of the risks of death that can be computed in units called “micromorts”. A micromort is a one in a million chance of death during weeks, months or years. A companion index is the “microlife” – one millionth of your adult lifespan – which they estimate to be about 30 minutes. These useful new words let us discuss the probable effects of two cigarettes (estimated cost 1 microlife), two pints of strong beer (1 microlife) or an inch on the waistline (cost 1 microlife a day seven days a week, the same as two hours a day watching TV).
Design and construction of an Unintentional Injury Risk Index (UIRI) to measure frequency and severity of accidental injuries in Europe
Published in International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, 2018
In decision analysis a unit of individual risk is used – micromort – that complements the micro-probability of death with the micro-probability of discapacity. Micromort (mM), a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death (Howard, 1984), is used to calculate the life risk involved in a determined activity: for example, a surgical procedure (Ahmad, Peterson, & Torella, 2015), driving a car (1 mM/100 miles), smoking (1 mM/1.4 cigarettes) and scuba diving (5 mM/dive). We have taken the idea formulated by these authors that ‘micromort values are supplemented with microdisability values’.