Posted by:
kimball
(
)
Date: January 12, 2016 09:32AM
I have actually run many of the numbers reported in General Conference over the years, including missionary statistics. This is my website:
http://www.fullerconsideration.com/membershipmethodology.phpBased on my calculations, which are not presented on that webpage, the average mission length in recent years, excluding the past 3 years where the data have been skewed due to the change in missionary age, have ranged between 1.7 and 1.75 years. I'll say 1.725 as an approximate average. Based on reports that have the ratio of elders-to-sisters at approximately 5.5:1, that should yield an average mission length of approximately 1.92 years.
The major unknown is how long missionaries serve, on average, before going home early. A linear triangular distribution would yield an average of roughly 1/3 of their mission length, which is 0.64 years, but I would guess that missionaries tend to go home early disproportionately more often than later, so I'll go ahead and presume the average is 1/4 of their mission length, or 0.48 years. I'll round up to 0.5 for good measure.
So, solving for X, the number of missionaries who go home early is approximately 13.7%. Given the number of assumptions I used, I would confidently place the actual number between 10% and 15%.