[Basta-users] not finding declining mortality

[Cliff Cunningham]

Dear Basta,

	Basta isn't finding declining mortality in a sample dataset where the lifetable output by Basta shows declining qx for 4 years in a row (0.78, 0.57, 0.36,0.29).  I input a negative value for b1 (beta) as a prior, but it still found a positive Gompertz fit.  

	Here is the lifetable and the Gompertz parameters.  I'm not sure where the signal for increasing mortality comes from here.  I am using your default.basta file when I run these.  The result is the same with the Makeham shape.

	


Coefficients:										
   Estimate  StdErr Lower95%CI Upper95%CI SerAutocor UpdateRate PotScaleReduc					
b0	-1.444	0.17489	-1.788	-1.1039	0.45801	0.6506	1.0003				
b1	0.31	0.07555	0.1642	0.459	0.47704	0.6506	1.0008				
pi	0.4108	0.03974	0.3366	0.4901	-0.01783	1	0.9996				
Convergence:										
Appropriate convergence reached for all parameters.							
DIC:											
591.5485											
> MakeLifeTable(FemalesDecSimulation79onlyBrthsAg0GOMak$Xq[1,], ax = 0.5, n = 1)					
  StartAge EndAge  lx  dx        mx  ax        qx        px    Lx    Tx        ex						
1	0	1	768	601	1.2855615	0.5	0.7825521	0.2174479	467.5	702	0.9140625
2	1	2	167	95	0.7949791	0.5	0.5688623	0.4311377	119.5	234.5	1.4041916
3	2	3	72	26	0.440678	0.5	0.3611111	0.6388889	59	115	1.5972222
4	3	4	46	13	0.3291139	0.5	0.2826087	0.7173913	39.5	56	1.2173913
5	4	5	33	33	2	0.5	1	0	16.5	16.5	0.5


	
	All the best!

   	Cliff Cunningham


        Professor
	Biology Department
    	Duke University
        130 Science Drive
	Durham NC 27708
	Phone 919-660-7356

http://www.biology.duke.edu/cunningham




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