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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
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Citation
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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/
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