Joseph Keller used to jog around the
Stanford campus and he was struck by all
the women jogging around as well he was
struck by their lovely their bouncy
ponytails why did the Epona tails swing
from side to side like that being a
physicist he set out to answer why
professor Keller was curious about many
things how people’s dribble why
earthworms wriggle heck in a spare time
he studied where the underwater nuclear
tests could set off tsunamis to three
months ago I hadn’t heard of Joseph
Keller I read about him in the New York
Times in the obituaries so he died three
months ago and I read about him in the
New York Times in the obituaries the New
York Times had half a page dedicated to
him in the print edition which as you
can imagine this premium space for a
newspaper of the estate oh actually I
read the obituaries in the New York
Times almost every day
my wife understandably thinks I’m rather
morbid to begin our day with scrambled
eggs and uh let’s see who died today but
I take solace in the fact that there are
at least twenty-two thousand other
morbid people like me that’s the number
of people who follow the New York Times
or bit theories on Twitter but if you
think about it
the front page of any newspaper is
usually bad news and highlights man’s
failures scandal strife controversy
crying these are the things found on the
front page an instance where bad news
cues accomplishment is at the end of the
paper in the obituaries in my day job I
focus on future insights that marketers
can derive from past data
it’s kind of like a rearview mirror
analysis and I began to think what if I
applied this rearview mirror to data
from the New York Times or Victory’s
what might that teach us what their
lessons and how you could get your
obituary featured even if you aren’t
around to enjoy it with this go well
with scrambled eggs so we looked at the
data mm or bit curious over a 20 month
period between 2015 and 2016 I say we
because an analysis of this magnitude is
too much for one person and so I begged
borrowed and stole my colleagues time
and talent to codify and interpret the
data and for this I’m grateful to them
so what do these two thousand deaths
rather two thousand lives teach us for
starters let’s look at some demographics
like what’s the ratio of men to women
men are written about four times as
often as women not something to take
line down this is simply a reflection of
life and chauvinism that existed in the
mid nineteen hundreds the good news is
this is changing so when the people who
are doing amazing stuff today die in 50
years that will look different hopefully
how old were they when they died on an
average 81 and their ages ranged from
19-year old Lauren Hill who played
basketball for Mount Saint Joseph
University while contending with an
inoperable brain tumor to ruth newman
who at 113 was a last female survivor of
the 1906 San Francisco earthquake what
did they die off causes of death were
what you would expect in any population
cancer and heart disease accounted for
many of the deaths death certainly
doesn’t discriminate what were these
people remembered for
to answer that we need to look at words
this here is a headline of an arbitrary
this one is of the amazing Lee Kuan Yew
if you remove the beginning and the end
you left with a beautifully worded
descriptor that in just a few words aims
to capture an achievement over a
lifetime just looking at these is
fascinating it’s riveting let me show
you a few try and guess who they are
these are all famous people who died in
the last couple of years this one’s
Prince who’s this absolutely my favorite
songwriter and come on oh yes so we took
those descriptors and did what’s called
natural language processing where you
feed these into a program the program
takes out all the superfluous words like
the and off the kind of words you can
mine easily in charades and then it
leaves you the most significant words
and not just with these five for all
2000 descriptors and this is what it
looks like the arts film theater
literature music dance and of course art
a huge you have to ask why in so many
societies including ours here in India
we insist that our kids pursue
engineering and business and and law and
medicine to be counted as successful and
while we’re talking profession let’s
take a look at age again what is the
average age at which they accomplished
things on an average that number is 37
what that means is on an average you got
to hit 37 before you first achieve
something significant that you will be
written about for 44 years later when
you die at 81 talk about having to be
patient
of course it varies with profession if
you’re a sports star we’ll probably hit
your stride
much earlier in your 20s and if you are
near 40s like me you can join the fun
world of politics because politicians do
their first and sometimes only
commendable act in their mid 40s
and sometimes getting it obituary
written about is simply a matter of
timing
Steven Bolin Bach a hotelier who was
featured earlier this year had spared
Donald Trump from declaring personal
bankruptcy in the 90s and we all know
president-elect Trump wasn’t just in the
news this year he was the news and if
you’re wondering what those others are
here are some examples buddhu topless
entertainment a tailored of presidents
isn’t it fascinating the tapestry of
life that things people do and the
things they are remembered for oh and
hang in there if you are a student less
than 5% of the 2000 dropped out of
school or college dropping out is
romantically overrated at least for the
folks who died up along parents you can
thank me later at this point our
curiosity was an overdrive and we said
what if he ingests even more data so you
went beyond the headline into the entire
first paragraph did it for all 2,000
orbit Ares but did it separately for two
groups of people people that are famous
and people that are not famous famous
people Leonard Cohen Prince Muhammad Ali
Harper Lee not so famous people people
like joseline Cooper Reverend Curie
Lana Kelly who spend time with Mother
Teresa in in Calcutta amazing people I’m
sure you haven’t heard any of their
names they are not famous so what if we
analyze the first paragraph of the
obituaries of the folks were famous and
the folks were not famous how would
those look side-by-side here’s how take
anyone here named John should thank your
parents and remind your kids to cut or
EOB to you in your gone and second help
we uncovered many lessons from lives
well led and what those people
immortalized in print could teach us the
exercise was a fascinating testament to
the Kaleidoscope that is life and even
more fascinating was that the overriding
majority of obituaries featured people
famous and non famous who did seemingly
extraordinary things they made a
positive dent in the fabric of society
they helped so ask yourselves as you go
back to your daily lives how am I using
my talents to help society because the
most powerful lesson here is if more
people lived their lives trying to be
famous and death the world would be a
much better place thank [Applause]