I have been using this for almost two years now. I am not sure if there are any other users but I find it very convenient. (Disclaimer: I wrote the extension).
That got me 74 results. I wgot the articles and manually removed the women based on related Wikipedia categories (turns out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_McClendon was a man, I would have removed him just based on the name).
Then I grepped the files for '"[0-9]\{4\} births"' to get the year of birth (this string marks the corresponding category). Two men didn't have a known birthdate, so I threw out their articles, too. This left me with the years of birth for 65 American billionaires. I got their years of death analogously.
After that I calculated their ages as the difference (yes, this could be off by +-1 year, but my method is not exactly rigorous anyway). The mean of these values is ~82.6. 29 of them are >= 86. The mean of those is ~91.3, or 5.3 years past 86. Considering the huge error bars, this is well in line with the general population average.
Probably not as much as you would think. Money can buy you access to cutting-edge medical treatment... but not safe or effective cutting-edge medical treatment. Almost all new treatments don't work or have more drawbacks than benefit, that's why it's called research - and billionaires get access to the results of the big clinical trials at about the same time as everyone else.
One possible difference is his access to tailored research and treatment.
When Finnish geneticist Leena Peltonen-Palotie was diagnosed with rare sarcoma in 2008, her colleagues started big project to save her life. Her cancer became the "worlds most studied cancer" for a short period. They sequenced her genes and used large screening robot to test tens of thousands combinations of different drugs against tissue samples taken from her.
They actually fond a cure for the sarcoma she was diagnosed with, but the cancer had already mutated into a form that did not respond to the treatment and she died two years later 2002. I believe this might have been the first ever for this kind of large scale tailored cancer research. Weirdly enough I can't find any mention of this research effort in English speaking magazines.
"They actually fond a cure for the sarcoma she was diagnosed with, but the cancer had already mutated into a form that did not respond to the treatment and she died two years later 2002"
One could also cite Steve Jobs. Despite heroic measures, his delay doomed him.
(To expand a little bit on this: the Gompertz curve means that even if a 85yo billionaire contracts some cancer and is able to buy a cure no one else can which isn't useless or iatrogenic, he is going to die very soon anyway as the annual mortality risk increases exponentially. This is what is behind those surprising observations like 'curing all cancer would only add a few years to the average life expectancy' - curing cancer just means that you die of dementia, Alzheimers, a heart attack or something else a year or two later.)
Steve Jobs had good prognosis but he delayed the surgery almost a year and relied on 'alternative medicine'. Even with late start he still lived eight years after the diagnosis when doctors used all tricks money can buy.
> he is going to die very soon anyway
This is true. People close to 90 are one flu and pneumonia away from death.
Of the average 86 year old male, you mean. I think he wouldn't bat an eye on getting the best personal health care on the face of the planet (it's also an important long-term goal for him.) He wouldn't overpay for it, either.
Warren Buffet is not health freak. He enjoys life and according to his own words is "one quarter Coca-Cola"
>"If I eat 2700 calories a day, a quarter of that is Coca-Cola. I drink at least five 12-ounce servings. I do it everyday."
Really funny:
>Asked to explain the high-sugar, high-salt diet that has somehow enabled him to remain seemingly healthy, Buffett replies: "I checked the actuarial tables, and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds. So I decided to eat like a six-year-old." The octogenarian adds, "It's the safest course I can take."
That is interesting. Goes against what I read, "what do you want to be remembered for? Longevity." which given what you just quoted must have just been a joke.
His daughter said that he does not drink water, he just drinks coke. He also eats lots of burgers and steak, I dont understand how his body remains in good health with all that junk food.
Yes, `hledger' is based on double entry bookkeeping. But we do not use the Credit and Debit conventions. Instead we use negative numbers to imply deduction in the balance of an account. Each journal entry must be balanced.
