Comments on: More Church President Probabilities

By: Ziff

Ziff — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:08:58 +0000

Thanks, Brian!

And Rachel, I’m so jealous that you got to go hear Jan Shipps talk! Her (or Armand Mauss’s) point seems like a good one. I guess we’ve had the situation where the President has some difficulties after becoming President, and in that case the counselors have pretty much run things? (I’m thinking of Ezra Taft Benson, but wasn’t Heber J. Grant also not in really good shape for a while at the end of his tenure?) So with the tradition of counselors generally staying in the First Presidency from one President to the next, maybe in that situation the Quorum would just sustain the new President and then turn the Church over to the counselors who stayed on? I don’t know, though. It’s a good question.

By: reader Rachel

reader Rachel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:59:59 +0000

What is the probability that a president of the church will be senile before he takes office? In the Q&A part of her lecture tonight, Jan Shipps said that Armand Mauss believes this will happen sometime.

By: Brian Duffin

Brian Duffin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:02:35 +0000

You know, it’s a shame I didn’t know you when I was taking my political statistics class! Love your charts, graphs, analysis, statistics and everything about your posts!! Good stuff!!!

By: Ziff

Ziff — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:18:12 +0000

Thanks, Rachel and Tatiana! I really appreciate your kind words.

By: Tatiana

Tatiana — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:36:01 +0000

I just want to add laurels to the growing pile. Ziff, these graphs are fantastic!

By: reader Rachel

reader Rachel — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:00:36 +0000

I love reading your graphs. Thanks for taking the time to make and share them.

By: Ziff

Ziff — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:46:22 +0000

Yes, JWL, there is. I mentioned it, but it's buried at the end of my previous post (here's a link). Briefly, the average error is 0.36, so men who did go on to become President had an average probability (averaging across their lives) of 0.64 (i.e., 1 - 0.36), and those who didn't had an average probability of 0.36. Mark D., if you're interested in life expectancies at different ages, you might look at the US life tables that I used for 20th century life expectancies. I don't know if this is what you were getting at, but as infant mortality has declined, a person's life expectancy at any given age has moved closer and closer to their life expectancy at birth minus their age.

By: JWL

JWL — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:11:38 +0000

Is there a statistical procedure whereby you could test your analysis by showing how predictive it was retroactively? In other words, based on the actual historical outcomes, how many apostles who became President had high probabilities in earlier time frames, and how many who had high probabilities in earlier time frames nonetheless did not become President?

By: john

john — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:56:04 +0000

Would it simplify things if we went back to seniority based on age rather than date of entry into the quorum as was done in the early days of the church? Would we still have bridesmaids?

By: Ziff

Ziff — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:20:58 +0000

Good question, Ray. That happened because he’s been in the Quorum for so little time that the smoothing procedure had very little data to smooth. Before smoothing, most of the trajectories had lots of bumps like that.