I recently offered to collect data for a ferret mortality study and so far
have received one direct reply.  Meanwhile, at least one other person has
offered to help -- a statistics student.
 
What I would do after collecting data is enter it into an Excel database and
let Excel do the calculations.  I am not a student of statistics, but I can
run a database.  If someone else, however, with a great deal more expertise
wants to take on this project, I am flexible.
 
I have also noticed some other good input for data to be collected, such as
whether the ferret is male or female, age of spaying or neutering, date of
birth (approximate), and date of death.  That's in addition to ferret's age at
death, cause of death, any health problems experienced during his or her life,
where the ferret was born (if known), where the ferret lived, what kind of
food the ferret ate on a regular basis, whether the ferret lived indoors or
outdoors, whether the ferret had companion ferrets, what color was the ferret.
 
One person did make a good point about the data being skewed toward the
experiences of college students, but even so, we might be able to see
some trends.
 
Let me know what you guys want to do.
[Posted in FML issue 1155]