Have more famous people died in 2016?

I&#x27;ve heard a lot of pet theories about this year, but mine is this: nationwide&#x2F;worldwide popularity is a relatively new thing that was initiated largely by the advent of the TV.<p>TV was standardized in 1941, but World War II interrupted the rise of TV pop culture.<p>We&#x27;re really starting to enter the years where people who had widespread popularity due to TV and movies are starting to die; 2016 is really just the beginning of a trend that will continue from now on.<p>I think there will probably be another bump around 2060 or so, when people who were really popularized by the internet start to die.

I think it&#x27;s the stature of the celebrities that died, not their quantity. While many celebrities are noteworthy, most known only to a niche audience or didn&#x27;t significantly affect people&#x27;s lives.<p>In 2014, the only legend was Robin Williams.<p>In 2015, BB King, Leonard Nimoy and Terry Pratchett died, but all had niche audiences.<p>In 2016, a lot of legends died: Bowie, Prince, Fidel Castro, Muhammed Ali. Each of those was truly transformative for their audiences and society as a whole. And that&#x27;s leaving out Leonard Cohen, Alan Rickman, Harper Lee and Nancy Reagan, each of whom had about the stature of 2015&#x27;s most noteworthy deaths.

This trend will continue forever until we start decreasing the amount of celebrities we create.

Is this a baby boomer thing? Seems like there will be a period soon where lots more people will be in retirement or dying. You&#x27;d expect boomer era celebs to also be dying in line with normies.<p>Perhaps their stats are better looked at after normalizing for age and lifestyle. Weekly views of seasonal trend is probably better than arbitrary Q1 vs remaining year. Might see there&#x27;s just an overall uptrend. Also would be worth looking at celeb vs. non-celeb death rate.

They&#x27;ve just announced the death of George Michael.<p>Here&#x27;s an 80&#x27;s tv show where he appears alongside Morrissey and Tony Blackburn to discuss music.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.post-punk.com&#x2F;morrissey-george-michael-talk-about-breakdancing-and-joy-division&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.post-punk.com&#x2F;morrissey-george-michael-talk-about...</a><p>He&#x27;s spot on about Paul Morley too.

....and we can add George Michael to the list...

As an American, I think that this year feels more significant because there are more names recognized by Americans. That list is very UK-centric, which isn&#x27;t a surprise considering the source of the article.<p>Of the list, for years 2012-2015 I only recognized around a third of the names but for 2016 I recognized about half.<p>Americans have a very disproportionate effect on the internet as a whole, so I&#x27;d expect that having more American-recognizable names would distort impressions about the celebrity fatality rate.

I have twice (four years apart) got into arguments with colleagues who have attempted to use the phrase &#x27;pre-prepared&#x27; -- it&#x27;s disappointing to see the beeb legitimise this aliteracy.

Obituaries get attention... I don&#x27;t know how to test the hypothesis that more famous people died than average... we would have to have a defined quantity of famous people... or perhaps number of famous obituaries vs. population... I suspect the % of &quot;famous&quot; people goes up over time. Imagine all the reality TV stars...

Here&#x27;s a 2016 celebrity death list...<p>Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Glen Fry, Natalie Cole...<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usmagazine.com&#x2F;celebrity-news&#x2F;pictures&#x2F;celebrity-deaths-in-2016-stars-weve-lost-w161657" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usmagazine.com&#x2F;celebrity-news&#x2F;pictures&#x2F;celebrity-...</a>

Found a simple way to test... IMDB allows us to query against death year.<p>2016 = 3,636 people with IMDB pages to date have died (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name?death_date=2016&amp;ref_=nm_ov_dth_year" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name?death_date=2016&amp;ref_=nm_ov_d...</a> -- doesn&#x27;t include all politicians or other famous folks, but certainly some of those people had IMDB pages at this point.)<p>2015 = 4,064 (My guess is the higher numbers were due to more time for data entry &#x2F; updates.)<p>2014 = 3,793<p>2013 = 3,764<p>2012 = 3,917<p>2011 = 3,780<p>2010 = 3,676 (Someone can do math on this, but I don&#x27;t see a huge swing in the last 7 years.)<p>2000 = 2,395<p>1990 = 1,856<p>1980 = 1,555 (Possibly due to some data not being entered once we start getting &quot;way far&quot; back.)<p>Another view... <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name</a><p>1920s = 2,185 <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name?death_date=1920-01-01,1929-12-31" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name?death_date=1920-01-01,1929-1...</a><p>1930s = 3,608<p>1940s = 5,805 vs 2,556,000,053 total world population in 1950 <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.infoplease.com&#x2F;ipa&#x2F;A0762181.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.infoplease.com&#x2F;ipa&#x2F;A0762181.html</a><p>1950s = 7,381 vs 3,039,451,023 (+6.92% growth in deaths of famous people &#x2F; all people vs previous decade)<p>1960s = 10,977 vs 3,706,618,163 (+21.95%)<p>1970s = 14,044 vs 4,453,831,714 (+6.48%)<p>1980s = 17,662 vs 5,278,639,789 (+6.11%)<p>1990s = 21,722 vs 6,082,966,429 (+6.73%)<p>2000s = 30,883 vs 6,848,932,929 (+26.27% -- an especially brutal decade for celebrities) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name?death_date=2000-01-01,2009-12-31" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;name?death_date=2000-01-01,2009-1...</a><p>2010s to date = 26,823<p>(2010s normalized at current rate = 38,319 vs 7,584,821,144 projected... or +12.04% vs previous decade)<p>Lots of things going on here... IMDB in the past didn&#x27;t record a lot of international movies -- certainly part of the lower numbers compared to modern records. But there is a growth in celebrity over time. Celebrity death rates seem to vary quite a bit though. Welcome anyone checking my math... I haven&#x27;t had coffee yet and this is far from scientific. (=