Statistics concerning deceased classmates
Often when we announce the passing of one of our classmates, the Secretary receives a message asking if we are experiencing more of these sad events in recent years than in the past. A glance at the graph below shows that this is true, with three years in the last 15 years having four deaths. There was only one year in the past 20 years without a death (1996). It is still true that the modal number of deaths in a given year is one. But the second half of our post-matriculation period has more than twice as many deaths (41) as the first half (20). Is this simply what one should expect with the aging of the class? Are we ahead of or behind the national average? I don't have comparison data to answer this question, but the fact that there was only one death reported in 2009 is heartening after a bad year in 2008.
Rolling Mean over the years
last modified 31 January 2010 (HAB)