Tom
DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com wrote:
> >e is an irrational number or non-repeating decimal like pi. It is used
> >as the base number in natural logarithms. Brad first suggested the use
> >of a base-10 common logarithm. Dan Davies then suggested that Brad use
> >a natural logarithm because logically the area under the slope of the
> >curve would be getting smaller the farther you got from the xy axis
> >point of origin. That's what I took out of this discussion.
> >
> >Not a phd,
> >
> >Tom Lehman
>
> Sadly, I didn't mean anything so clever. Among finance/econ geeks, E is
> also the "expectation" operator. So E(0) in this context is "Expectation
> at time 0". Brad said that life expectancy at birth was the least worst
> measure. I objected that E(0) wasn't equal to E(0)(E(10)) "expectation at
> time 0 of expectation at time 10". Usually, this would be equal to E(0) -
> after all, there's something funny about expecting your expectation to
> change, which is where the reference to "law of iterated expectations" came
> in. But when you're talking about life expectancies, you can expect that
> if you survive until ten, then your expectation of your lifespan will
> change markedly. I suggested that you should be comparing expectancies on
> the basis of life expectancy at the most common age for people to die,
> which, frankly, sounds a lot less silly when you use five-shilling words
> like "modal"
>
> "I hope that's a bit clearer"
>
> As you can see, the reason why I resort to jargon is that I'm completely
> unable to express myself in normal English. Brad, who is a proper
> professor and writes books and everything, has no such excuse.
>
> Sorry about that, but as my employer so kindly reminds the world, it is
> unwise to rely on information contained in emails from me.
>
> dd
>
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