jingc:

Gompertz’s law of human mortality is this: Your probability of dying during a given year doubles every 8 years.

There is one important lesson to be learned from Benjamin Gompertz’s mysterious observation.  By looking at theories of human mortality that are clearly wrong, we can deduce that our fast-rising mortality is not the result of a dangerous environment, but of a body that has a built-in expiration date.

It’s a really fascinating read (and easy to read, too, despite the graphs and formulas).

There is an interesting kink in the graph on the left between 80 and 90 years.