Church President Probabilities, Changes with the Death of One Q15 Member

After I put up my last post, where I gave updated probabilities of each current Q15 member becoming Church president, a friend asked me if I had ever looked at sensitivity of these probabilities to the death of one Q15 member. So, for example, Russell M. Nelson is 99. If he died tomorrow, this would obviously have a big effect on the chances for Dallin H. Oaks, as he’d become Church president. But what about all the men junior to him? And you could ask the same question about each Q15 member. Like David A. Bednar seems a pretty good bet to become Church president at some point, but if out of the blue, he died tomorrow, how would that shuffle the probabilities for the men junior to him?

I recalculated all the yearly probabilities of being Church president for each of the 14 remaining members of the Quorum, with each current member being removed in turn. I used the same method and same actuarial table as in my last post. For simplicity, I didn’t do any of the health adjustments that I tried in that post; I just stuck with the base case of the unadjusted mortality table probabilities for each man (still depending on age, though).

To make the results easier to look at, I’m showing them organized by surviving member rather than by dying member. That is, I have one graph showing all the probability changes for Dallin H. Oaks if someone senior to him died (of course there’s just one man senior to him: Russell M. Nelson) and then another graph for all the probability changes for M. Russell Ballard if someone senior to him died, and so forth. Also, so you can compare the graphs to the ones in my last post, I’m keeping each man’s line color the same as in the last post and also keeping the scale of the Y-axis constant for all the graphs. In each graph, I’m making the original probability curve solid and then making dashed all the probability curves that would result if another senior member died. This might sound too messy to look at, but I think it turns out to not be too bad because the probability curves shift in regular ways, and don’t jump and cross each other all willy-nilly. Anyway, I’m hoping that even if this explanation of the graphs doesn’t make total sense, once you look at a couple of the them, it will be clearer.

There are a couple of other things to note about the graphs. One is that to avoid having the graphs for the more junior members be really cluttered, I’m only showing modified probability curves for a senior member’s death changes the member in question’s probability by at least one percentage point in at least one year. For example, Russell M. Nelson’s death would have a near zero impact on Ulisses Soares’s probabilities, as Elder Soares is already very likely to outlive President Nelson, and his chances of becoming Church president depend much more heavily on the life expectancies of men closer to him in seniority, like Gerrit W. Gong, for example. The other last thing to note is that because I only checked probabilities in yearly steps, pairs of Q15 members who are the same age as of the start date have exactly the same effects on probabilities for members junior to them if they (the members who are the same age) were to die. This means that there are two pairs of members, Jeffrey R. Holland and Dieter F. Uchtdorf (both 82) and Neil L. Andersen and Ronald A. Rasband (both 72), for whom the adjusted probability lines for men junior to both of them are identical, so I’ve just labeled them with both men’s names.

Okay, enough preamble. Here’s the graph for Dallin H. Oaks.

There’s only one man senior–Russell M. Nelson–and if he died, Dallin H. Oaks’s probability would jump to 100%, and then for future years would just be his annual survival probability.

Dallin H. Oaks is clearly more of an obstacle for M. Russell Ballard than Russell M. Nelson is, but his probabilities still aren’t very high even if President Oaks died.

Jeffrey R. Holland starts out with such a high probability that he wouldn’t get much bump from the deaths of men senior to him.

President Nelson isn’t shown on the graph because his death would have too small of an effect. That is, Elder Eyring’s probability curve given President Nelson’s death would be pretty much indistinguishable from the original curve.

As I’ve noted before, because Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Jeffrey R. Holland are very close in age, Elder Uchtdorf’s probabilities would increase pretty markedly if Elder Holland died.

Like Jeffrey R. Holland, David A. Bednar has high probabilities to begin with, as he’s already expected to most likely outlive members senior to him. The death of Elder Holland or Uchtdorf, even though they’re over a decade older, would improve his chances still a little more.

Quentin L. Cook doesn’t have very high probabilities, as three men senior to him are younger than he is. Of course the death of Elder Bednar would improve his chances, although still not to a very high level.

This is a similar pattern for several men junior to Elder Bednar, where his death would improve their probabilities markedly, because he’s younger than they are while at the same time being senior to them in the Q15.

We have to go all the way down to Dale G. Renlund in the Q15 before Elder Bednar is no longer the senior member whose death would have the greatest effect.

I’d love to hear if anything stuck out to you or surprised you in the results.