This is an information visualization experiment I made to inform the uncertainty of life expectancy.

The visualization was inspired by both Hypothetical Outcome Plots and Years You Have Left to Live By FlowingData, using animation frame to convey uncertainty, and dots with physics to present lives.

The height each dot can reach is drawn from the distribution of life expectancy. The color change after reaching the highest point shows the underlying cause of death.

When visualizing life expectancy, I wanted to put more positive feelings. I used bright cyan color to give a sense of surviving, and flying-up dots over barriers shows the striving lives. Also, the gradient of the bar barriers shows the conditional probability of living through the next decade. Hope it relives the audience by saying once you make it to 80, it is not a big deal living to 95+.