Peak Ages, Revisited

Back in May, Mike shared in his blog a fascinating chart titled "The Age You Peak At Everything, According to Science*." And in line with my demonstrated talent for taking off on ideas already introduced by other bloggers, I thought I'd go back and look at that chart one more time, and offer my own thoughts on it ...

First of all, speaking as a linguist, age 7 as the peak age for Learning a New Language sounds about right. I pick up languages pretty easily, but I started learning German in high school and Russian in you can tell how easy it is to speak Chinese because tens of millions of little children in China speak it perfectly well ... and it's because they learned it from their earliest years.

Life Satisfaction actually peaks twice, according to this chart - at age 23 and again at age 69**. I seem to remember being fairly satisfied at age 23, but haven't made it quite to 69 yet. However, closing in on age 66, I'm already pretty content with Agnes, my retiree status, my six grandchildren, my friends, my garden, and my other hobbies. Maybe I'm just ahead of the curve. Oh, and speaking of age 23, the chart says that it's the age of Maximum Female Attractiveness to Men. I'm not sure I agree with that, though, because I think there are a lot of very attractive women out there much older than 23. As the old saying goes, the major compensation nature pays to men for getting older is that every year there are more women we find attractive.

I don't understand Happiness with Your Body peaking at age 74 ... while I'm not a complete wreck yet, I think my body was a lot firmer and more attractive back around my 20s and 30s. Women tell me today that my gray hair makes me look distinguished, which sounds better than older than rocks, so I guess I'll take it.

Vocabulary is said to peak in the late 60s and early 70s (71 on the chart). I have my doubts about how accurate this is, given that the president is 71 and I'm not especially impressed by his communicative skills.

And finally, although it's not specifically indicated on the chart, but in the accompanying text, men's attractiveness to women seems to improve with age. However, as Mike reminded me in our exchange of comments on his blog, we've probably exceeded the allowable margin of age difference ... by a few decades.

Oh, well ...

Have a good day. Get ready to excel on schedule.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* You can see the chart in its original article with the original discussion and explanations on the IFL Science website here.

** I'm not going to make any jokes about 69 producing great satisfaction.