Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 18:23:54 -0500 (EST) From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] Ex-presidents of the US Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> A major topic at last night's New Year's Eve party at the Fabulous Bungalow was ex-presidents of the US. I decided it was as good an excuse as any to keep my programming skills from getting rusty. So I found a table of presidents, their birthdays, inauguration dates, and dates of death, and started coding. There have been five ex-presidents alive simultaneously on three occasions: * From March 4, 1861 to January 18, 1862: Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan * From January 20, 1993 to April 22, 1994: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush * From January 20, 2001 to June 5, 2004: Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton There have never been six. There are currently three: Carter, Bush, and Clinton. There have been zero on six occasions: * Before April 30, 1789, when nobody had ever been president * From December 14, 1799 to March 4, 1801, when Adams was president * From July 31, 1875 to March 3, 1877, when Grant was president * From June 24, 1908 to March 4, 1909, when Roosevelt was president * From January 5, 1933 to March 4, 1933, when Hoover was president * From January 22, 1973 to August 4, 1974, when Nixon was president Washington was the only president to have no ex-presidents alive during *any* part of his presidency. My first thought was that the number starts at zero, increases whenever a president leaves office without dying, and decreases when an ex-president dies. But then I realized this wasn't quite right. Can you see the flaw? The average number of living ex-presidents in the 19th century was 2.19, in the 20th century was 1.89, and in the 21st century so far, 4.56. The medians were 2, 2, and 5 respectively. What about past, present, and future presidents alive at once? (Of course I have to exclude anyone who has still not yet been president.) Nineteen past, present, and future presidents were alive simultaneously from March 18, 1837, when Grover Cleveland was born, to April 4, 1841, when William H. Harrison died, and again from January 29, 1843, when William McKinley was born, to June 8, 1845, when Andrew Jackson died. The smallest number of past, present, and future presidents were alive simultaneously, excluding 1784 and earlier, and excluding 1969 and later, was nine, from Grover Cleveland's death on June 24, 1908 to Lyndon Johnson's birth on August 27 of the same year. Another question is when each president was or will have been dead for as long as he was alive. Here are all the presidents in order of that date. Note that only one president doesn't land in or after the 20th century. And that Ford almost made it to the 22nd century. George Washington 10/06/1867 James K. Polk 01/27/1903 James Monroe 09/08/1904 William H. Harrison 05/28/1909 Thomas Jefferson 09/24/1909 Zachary Taylor 02/21/1916 John Adams 03/08/1917 Abraham Lincoln 06/15/1921 James Madison 10/11/1921 Andrew Jackson 09/02/1923 John Q. Adams 10/07/1928 James A. Garfield 07/22/1931 John Tyler 11/09/1933 Franklin Pierce 08/24/1934 Andrew Johnson 03/02/1942 Martin Van Buren 03/12/1942 Chester A. Arthur 01/02/1944 James Buchanan 07/11/1945 Millard Fillmore 05/07/1948 Ulysses S. Grant 10/19/1948 William McKinley 04/29/1960 Rutherford B. Hayes 05/04/1963 Benjamin Harrison 10/03/1968 Theodore Roosevelt 03/17/1979 Grover Cleveland 09/30/1979 Warren G. Harding 04/30/1981 Woodrow Wilson 04/19/1991 Calvin Coolidge 07/08/1993 William H. Taft 08/28/2002 Franklin D. Roosevelt 06/22/2008 John F. Kennedy 05/17/2010 Lyndon B. Johnson 06/19/2037 Dwight D. Eisenhower 09/09/2047 Herbert Hoover 12/30/2054 Harry S Truman 08/14/2061 Richard M. Nixon 08/03/2075 Ronald W. Reagan 10/03/2097 Gerald R. Ford 06/09/2100 If there's any interest, I can easily modify my programs to do the same with any other list of people whose birth and death dates are known, or to list when they'd been dead twice as long as they'd been alive, or the midpoint of their life, or whatever.