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> [Yvonne's] kid, by the way, was calling Jeanne “mamzanne”, that is, Mom Jeanne. Most french children call their grandmother mamie + something differentiating

> [Yvonne's] kid, by the way, was calling Jeanne “mamzanne”, that is, Mom Jeanne. Most french children call their grandmother mamie + something differentiating from their other grandmother. Mamie Jeanne? No child use mom + first name. > Arles was one of the biggest French communes at that time with 38 thousand people (even now, not every Moscow satellite city has that many people) Arles was and still is far from being one of the biggest french communes. It is not among the 100 most crowded cities in France. > Jeanne was the first (by birth date) validated supercentenarian in France and that she is also the most long-lived person in the world. It is a very unlikely combination of events from the point of view of statistics. Isn't it exactly as unlikely that the 1st is the most long-lived, as the 17th being the longest-lived? This hypothesis of Jeanne Calment dying in 1934 may be true, but this article does not really convince me.

cortesoft 8y ago
> Isn't it exactly as unlikely that the 1st is the most long-lived, as the 17th being the longest-lived? No, because lifespan is not some completely random thing. It is continually improving over time. This would be like if the fastest 100m time was set 30 years ago, and hasn’t been broken since. This would be very strange, since the record actually keeps improving over time. It is not impossible (the long jump record stood for many years) but is at least not probable.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  This is generally a good point, but I'm not entirely sure it applies to high-end outliers for aging? We've improved medicine in a lot of ways, but rising lifespans (even measured from adulthood) are almost entirely driven by preventing certain premature deaths and increasing life expectancy for other terminal conditions. Very elderly people have generally escaped a lot of common mortality risks already (heart disease onset is 85% by age 80 in the US, implying that someone who doesn't have it at age 100 isn't likely to). Meanwhile, they rarely benefit from our improving treatments for other risks - we can substantially improve life expectancy for even incurable cancers in adulthood, but centenarians can't tolerate the sort of aggressive treatments we use for that result. (Interestingly, I had thought Alzheimer's was similar to heart disease, but annual onset rates at 90+ are almost as high as at 65-89 combined - it appears to simply be a steadily rising risk. Of course, we can't treat it well and incidents rates haven't changed much, so it's not really a factor in which cohort should have the longest lifespans.) The best visualization I've found is a bit messy, but nicely breaks down life expectancy by age over time. Since 1850, 70-year-olds appear to have gained about 7 years of expectancy, and I'm guessing 100-year-olds have gained substantially less. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-e...
- scj 8y ago
  She died about 20 years ago, which means we're only one generation away since her record was set. But there's a simple explanation: all of the people represented on the top 10 eldest list were contemporary to WW1, the Spanish Flu, the Depression, and WW2. In general, one side of the list would have been middle aged by the time WW1 started, and the other just barely met drafting age by the time the war was over. The people who would have been born in the early 1890s were hit hard by world events, their absence on the top 10 is likely a temporary dip that we're now just starting to come out of.
btilly 8y ago
The most convincing point to me is that she doesn't fit in the statistical models. After people get to a certain age, their odds of surviving should be describable with an exponential curve. We can fit these curves to people who survive past an old age, like 105 or 110 or 115. And most of the distribution fits just fine. But Jeanne Calment and Sarah Knauss don't. They are both extremely unlikely outliers. At which point you have to ask the question. What theory do you consider most likely? That the model is wrong, that we happen to be lucky enough to have seen these two extraordinary data points very early, or that these two data points are fraudulent? From a Bayesian point of view, this is a very strong argument in support of fraud. And when specific evidence emerges, including from photos, that there was fraud, it should be instantly believable.
- littlestymaar 8y ago
  The statistical model only makes sense if we consider the people to have an homogeneous genetic “potential”. Of course that make sense in average, but that makes no sense for outliers. Jeanne Calment and Sarah Knauss could share a specific (and really rare) individual mutation that makes their expected lifespan way higher than the average human and comparing them to others just doesn't make sense. If you look at the distribution of human sizes, Robert Wadlow and John F Carroll are also outliers but nobody is questioning their size ;).
  - btilly 8y ago
    You are arguing that the model is wrong. Which is not impossible, and is a theory that the statistical evidence also supports. You gave as an example human size. It could also be a non-linear interaction effect between genes. Kind of like how most waves follow the linear wave model, but there is a separate distribution of very rare non-linear waves called rogue waves. (Very rare as in one every several months at a given spot.) When you combine rogue waves and a heavy sea, you get waves with a size that should be seen only once every 10,000 years or so anywhere on Earth. So yes, we can come up with all sorts of possibilities. However when you combine statistical models with specific photographic evidence pointing towards fraud, the fraud theory is a lot more believable than it would otherwise be.
rockinghigh 8y ago
I don’t know how the author decided that mamzanne meant mom Jeanne. It sounds like mamie Jeanne and is consistent with how French people refer to their grandmother.

cortesoft 8y ago

> Isn't it exactly as unlikely that the 1st is the most long-lived, as the 17th being the longest-lived? No, because lifespan is not some completely random thing. It is continually improving over time. This would be like if the fastest 100m time was set 30 years ago, and hasn’t been broken since. This would be very strange, since the record actually keeps improving over time. It is not impossible (the long jump record stood for many years) but is at least not probable.

Bartweiss 8y ago
This is generally a good point, but I'm not entirely sure it applies to high-end outliers for aging? We've improved medicine in a lot of ways, but rising lifespans (even measured from adulthood) are almost entirely driven by preventing certain premature deaths and increasing life expectancy for other terminal conditions. Very elderly people have generally escaped a lot of common mortality risks already (heart disease onset is 85% by age 80 in the US, implying that someone who doesn't have it at age 100 isn't likely to). Meanwhile, they rarely benefit from our improving treatments for other risks - we can substantially improve life expectancy for even incurable cancers in adulthood, but centenarians can't tolerate the sort of aggressive treatments we use for that result. (Interestingly, I had thought Alzheimer's was similar to heart disease, but annual onset rates at 90+ are almost as high as at 65-89 combined - it appears to simply be a steadily rising risk. Of course, we can't treat it well and incidents rates haven't changed much, so it's not really a factor in which cohort should have the longest lifespans.) The best visualization I've found is a bit messy, but nicely breaks down life expectancy by age over time. Since 1850, 70-year-olds appear to have gained about 7 years of expectancy, and I'm guessing 100-year-olds have gained substantially less. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Life-e...
scj 8y ago
She died about 20 years ago, which means we're only one generation away since her record was set. But there's a simple explanation: all of the people represented on the top 10 eldest list were contemporary to WW1, the Spanish Flu, the Depression, and WW2. In general, one side of the list would have been middle aged by the time WW1 started, and the other just barely met drafting age by the time the war was over. The people who would have been born in the early 1890s were hit hard by world events, their absence on the top 10 is likely a temporary dip that we're now just starting to come out of.

btilly 8y ago

The most convincing point to me is that she doesn't fit in the statistical models. After people get to a certain age, their odds of surviving should be describable with an exponential curve. We can fit these curves to people who survive past an old age, like 105 or 110 or 115. And most of the distribution fits just fine. But Jeanne Calment and Sarah Knauss don't. They are both extremely unlikely outliers. At which point you have to ask the question. What theory do you consider most likely? That the model is wrong, that we happen to be lucky enough to have seen these two extraordinary data points very early, or that these two data points are fraudulent? From a Bayesian point of view, this is a very strong argument in support of fraud. And when specific evidence emerges, including from photos, that there was fraud, it should be instantly believable.

littlestymaar 8y ago
The statistical model only makes sense if we consider the people to have an homogeneous genetic “potential”. Of course that make sense in average, but that makes no sense for outliers. Jeanne Calment and Sarah Knauss could share a specific (and really rare) individual mutation that makes their expected lifespan way higher than the average human and comparing them to others just doesn't make sense. If you look at the distribution of human sizes, Robert Wadlow and John F Carroll are also outliers but nobody is questioning their size ;).
- btilly 8y ago
  You are arguing that the model is wrong. Which is not impossible, and is a theory that the statistical evidence also supports. You gave as an example human size. It could also be a non-linear interaction effect between genes. Kind of like how most waves follow the linear wave model, but there is a separate distribution of very rare non-linear waves called rogue waves. (Very rare as in one every several months at a given spot.) When you combine rogue waves and a heavy sea, you get waves with a size that should be seen only once every 10,000 years or so anywhere on Earth. So yes, we can come up with all sorts of possibilities. However when you combine statistical models with specific photographic evidence pointing towards fraud, the fraud theory is a lot more believable than it would otherwise be.

rockinghigh 8y ago

I don’t know how the author decided that mamzanne meant mom Jeanne. It sounds like mamie Jeanne and is consistent with how French people refer to their grandmother.