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According to the US Census Department, someone born in 1950 has a life expectancy

of 68.2 years, while someone born in 1970 has a life expectancy of 70.8 years.

(a) What is a reasonable life expectancy of someone born in 1960?

(b) What is a reasonable life expectancy of someone born in 1980?

(c) What is a reasonable life expectancy of someone born in 2000?

Part (a) is an interpolation question. Parts (b) and (c) are extrapolation questions. Which

of your answers are you the most confident about? Explain.

User Ubermensch
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1 Answer

3 votes

Answer:

a) 69.5 b)72.1 c)74.7

Explanation:

a)Someone born in 1950 has life expectancy=68.2 yrs while 1970=70.8 yrs

to find life expectancy of someone born in 1960 we can interpolate to find the results like this:

(68.2+70.8)/2 =69.5 because 1960 is exactly in between 1950 and 1970

Now we can see the trend like this :

68.2,69.5,70.8 and common difference is 1.3

b) adding 1.3 to 70.8 we can get life expectancy for someone born i 1980 and that is 72.1

c) adding two times 1.3 life expectancy of someone born in 2000 is 74.7 as year gap is 2

Generally it is said that interpolation is more accurate and extrapolation can have errors but in our present case i'm more confident about b and c as the series is simple but it too depends on a to find the accurate common difference so if there is some errror in a we too have error chances in b and c so they are interrelated.

User Salma
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