On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    them , we hold it for certain that it would not have escaped their notice . But do they hint at the least imperfection ? No such thing * From that day to this the Tables have been silently acquiesced in by all Europe , until they are now , for the first time , attacked

    by . the anonymous traducer in the ' British Medical Almanack . ' He accuses Mr Finlaison of giving results , but not facts . Why , there never was a collection of facts in this country that contained the tenth part of what he has furnished in this very Report ! Every fact within his reach is given with the utmost minuteness , and yet his antagonist states that Mr Finlaison has not even specified what were the ages of the lives on which he reasons ; as , for instance , if a set of them be set down at 30

    years of age , whether that means that they will be 30 years old next birth-day , as is reckoned in an insurance office , or whether they were 30 years old the last birth-day , as is counted in a life annuity office ; or whether , one with another , they are 30 years and a half exactly ? Now this is a wilful falsehood , which the writer perfectly well knew when he penned it . In page 12 of Mr Finlaison ' s Report we have found the following sentence : —

    " Taking the lives one with another they are , in every case , half a year older than the age stated . Wherefore , in the three last columns , there are 55 at 10 ^ years old , out of whom 4 die in a year ; 172 at Hi years old , out of whom 4 also die in a year . While the mortality which happens from the age of 10 exactly to that of 11 is thus apparently unknown . But it is too evident to require any argument that it must be a mean proportional between the two quantities which are given . "

    The writer says that Mr Finlaison made it a boast that he was at work on those Tables nine years , with the aid of six calculators , and says something about any body being able to do them in nine weeks . We observe , at page 64 of the Report , that the names , ages , &c . extracted from the Government Records , in individual detail , are , of females , 13 , 005 ; males ,

    9 , 347 ;—both , 22 , 352 . We should think no further answer necessary than this statement , were it not that far abler men than this writer ( see the article on Mortality in one of the new Encyclopaedias , by Mr Milne ) have fallen into the mistake that Mr Finlaison has computed no more than the Government have

    thought fit to publish . It should be remembered , that he has never published any treatise whatsoever as a work on Annuities , nor do we think he has ever appeared before the public as an author in any shape . At different times he has given evidence before various Committees of the House of Commons , and on one occasion , as we have mentioned , a Report on a very limited part of the subject of Life Annuities , with a view to exhibit the

    Untitled Article

    Liberal Mathematics * 45

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 45, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/47/