The statistics on this are *amazing*. (via New York)
But in dwelling on their 81-year marriage, the papers were obscuring
the other–and far more remarkable–statistical fact: That a man born in
1908 lived to be over 101, and that the woman he asked to be his wife
did the same. According to British census figures, his life expectancy
was 49; hers was 53…The chance of a man born in 1910 surviving
to 101 years old is .133 percent, and the chance of a woman doing the
same is .801 percent. If you multiply these two figures, you get the
probability of a marriage between two such people: roughly
one-thousandth of a percent (.00106533, to be precise).
Greg Palmer 