Life expectancy is an interesting concept, it means the number of left years of people in certain age. Although in many developed countries, the concept of life expectancy is quite similar to "median life span", but there are still subtle differences. Life expectancy is measured by using life tables, while median life span is calculated from data collected. Now that I'm not really good at dealing with data and charts (and these have been done in the lecture), I'm going to talk about the meaning of life expectancy.
It is a fact that life expectancy of different countries differs a lot throughout the world. Just like what professor said, it is not really fair. Yes, in terms of economic development and social security or some other perspectives, living in those countries whose citizens have shorter life expectancy means they would have poorer life quality, the resources they have access to is much more limited. But let’s focus on the stat, or the number. Is it true that shorter life equals to misfortune?
There is saying that the number of certain things one can do in his or her life is limited, once the counting comes to zero, people die. Surely it is only a random saying, which is usually told as a joke. But once we shift the idea of “the longer, the better”, we may find out that the years those who have longer life expectancy exceed ones with shorter life expectancy are years in late middle-age and old age, which are mostly considered to be less productive periods (to make the comparison fairer, though it doesn't truly fit the fact, we only make comparison among people in the same land with different life expectancy). There are also lots of examples of great persons with comparatively shorter lifetime, so how long can you live is not really an important problem to those who want to do something big. Of course I don't mean pay no attention on health care or things like that, the point is, live a life you really want to live, and don't be limited by anything.
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