Talk:List of European countries by life expectancy

World Bank - US Census Bureau
Should we use either of these data sources on this page? Nasa-verve (talk) 23:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * US Census Bureau International Database - http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/informationGateway.php
 * World Bank - Economic Development Indicators - http://ddp-ext.worldbank.org/ext/DDPQQ/member.do?method=getMembers&userid=1&queryId=135

Israel
Why exactly is Israel here? I understand that there is a rare definition of Europe that includes Israel, but I don't think it should be used here. CuboneKing (talk) 22:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

well just for general context really, and only on the map, not the table. the data for israel is usually not far enough out to throw off the colour ranges for the map, so may aswell. i threw in canada, russia, morocco too, since there was plenty of space Tetriminos (talk) 10:46, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Strange enough, Belgium is not in the list, although it should according to the map. --2A02:1811:CE83:5900:3D04:55EC:DC2A:47FD (talk) 17:12, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

scripts for updating data
shell script available for updating the map, and ruby script available for updating the table here:

https://github.com/HLLNSTN/wikipedia-european-stats-map

all that's needed is a copy and paste from the world bank website to a plain text editor, and a few tweaks to the colour coding ranges in the map script

Tetriminos (talk) 10:45, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Graphs of cherry-picked selection of countries
Any graph should include all countries, or have a reliably sourced purpose for a sub-set, in my view. Otherwise it fails WP:OR. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:33, 24 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't see a way to include to graph all 46 countries, that are part of Europe, according to the list of countries in Europe, otherwise there will be mess. This charts are just examples of life expectancy in European countries. I don't see serious reason why countries-examples should be combined according to some strict criterion. Much more important, that these charts show that life expectancy in some big European countries stopped to increase in the interval 2014–2019 (even before COVID-19).
 * Countries on the first graph are six European countries with biggest populations according to "List of countries and dependencies by population" and "List of countries by population (United Nations)".
 * The second chart contains smaller European countries but, really, there is arbitrary moment of choosing countries near bottom egde - there is no particular reason of selecting one country and not selecting another, even if it has a little more population. Indeed, I made a choice just subjectively deciding that they are more interesting. That's just examples of countries, no more, without any additional statements. And if one country has a little more population today, does not mean that this order will be kept tomorrow also.
 * The third graph is the biggest countries of CIS but since they are also in the list of European countries, this chart also have a right to be at this page - but this is not principal, just more examples for reflection of a reader. --Lady3mlnm (talk) 18:41, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I think that putting a sub-set on the same graph implies a conclusion about them in comparison to each other, and it is not for us to attempt to draw such conclusions in this article. -- DeFacto (talk). 15:12, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @DeFacto, The main purpose of these charts here is not to compare countries between each other, but to show general picture of change of life expectancy over time. Especially interesting things are observed in last 5 years before COVID. But I don't make my own conclusion in the article - I just show picture and allow readers to make conclusions themselves. The sources to original data is given, both for charts and tables.
 * Presence of some orbitrary moment of choosing countries and grouping them between plots are not the reason to don't place these plots at this page. I don't see how information can be presented better, considering technical limitations of Wikipedia and my skills. It's not possible to show 46 countries on one plot. It is better to give information in inperfect form than to don't give at all. If somebody will present the stats better, I will be very glad. --Lady3mlnm (talk) 07:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @Lady3mlnm, the graphing of some countries, but not others, adds undue weight to those countries, which inevitably leads to more attention being attracted to those countries. Perhaps the graphs could be for just the aggregation of all the countries included in Europe - and thus not singling-out individual examples? -- DeFacto (talk). 08:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @DeFacto, Charts contain all largest countries of Europe (by number of population) and don't contain any small countries. That's fair that large countries deserve more attention than small countries, and they should be used as examples. Really, there is a loose moment for countries with average number of population. But I don't see why this loose moment should be principal - illustrated examples are good, we should choose something for examples, why not this?
 * If you mean to create single line for Europe than this will be misleading. During 2014–19 some European countries showed average increase of life expectancy better than world average (and that's why I also prever to include in the table the world average row). But some other countries have plateau or even small decrease. If we take Europe average chart, it will show moderate increase, so readers will have impressions that all European countries had moderate increase of life expectancy. But that not so! Moreover, site of World Bank Group, from there I take original data, don't have Europe average option.
 * If you mean to place 46 countries on one plot but don't do legend for chart, that will be mess, that don't say to readers anything. And it is not fair that countries with dozens millions of population will have the same presence as countries with population less than million people. Some small European countries had very high life expectancy, but that's not a characteristic of Europe as a whole - such approach leads readers to misleading.
 * If we will argue about each such moments, we will come to nowhere. Examples are examples, without any additional statements. It can be someone will do this better. But for now, it is better to do imperfectly, than not to do at all. -- Lady3mlnm (talk) 19:08, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @DeFacto, I redone charts with more strict criteria of country selection - countries are chosen and grouped by number of population according to the List of countries in Europe, List of countries and dependencies by population, List of countries by population (United Nations). The 1st chart contains the 8 most populated countries of Europe, the 2nd chart contains 9 countries that have 9-17 places, the 3rd chart contains 10 countries that have 18-27 places. With exceptions of countries that traditionally related to Asia (like Turkey and Kazakhstan) since (1) only small part of them belong to Europe and (2) these countries had low life expectancy in the 1960x - that lead to strong vertical compression of charts and making them less legible. I refused to do charts for every country since in this case I also should made charts for every country in Asia, America and Africa, otherwise this is unfair. I also added chart of the largest post-USSR countries located at the territory of Europe - I don't insist on this 4th chart, it was created for other place, but I don't see reason why do not place it here too. The more facts, the more material for thinking. But I will insist on the first three charts. I spent too much time making these charts. Paying attention of people to slowing down the rate of increase in life expectancy in very many developed countries does not contradict to neutral position of encyclopedia. --Lady3mlnm (talk) 16:15, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Including regions and trade blocs as countries?
Not sure why we would want to do this. Why are the stats for selected groupings, Europe, European Union, etc., more relevant than for any other groupings? It appears as if we are trying to make an OR point. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:41, 24 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I consider that stats for regions are relevant, since they provide reference points for countries, and allow to estimate life expectancy in a country on the background of region, to whom this country belongs. All stats for regions are taken from the same source that stats for countries (World Bank Group (1), World Bank Group (2)).
 * For example, such reference points allows a reader to see obviously that, though majority of European countries have relatively high life expectancy compared to the world, they had little progress in life expactancy in the last years. --Lady3mlnm (talk) 18:43, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @DeFacto, My passion is life extension, that is adjacent topic to life expectancy. I spent much time playing with data how life expectancy in different countries change over time. And I found that several reference points are helpful to understand the picture. Though life expectancy in Europe relatively high comparing to average world level, increase of life expectancy during last years is much less than average world level. And similar things can be said about subrigeons. This is well seen only if tables have reference points such as World, Europe, etc. For clear country comparison there are total Lists of countries by life expectancy. Sub-lists for regions should have their interesting places for analysis and thinking. These grouping is not my OR, they exist in the origianal databases - I just transfered them to Wikipedia and made more visual. So, I will insist. --Lady3mlnm (talk) 16:20, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Programs for creation of lists
My programs for generation of lists are available at GitHub: for WHO, for the World Bank Group. Programming language is Python (Jupyter-notebook). Feel free to use and modify the code for creation of analogous lists. --Lady3mlnm (talk) 15:08, 30 May 2022 (UTC)