A Formula for Expressing the Decrement of Human Life (Continued from p. 353, Vol. VI)

Extract

Another mode of easily appreciating the regularity and the analogies of different tables is, to construct a diagram, in the form of a curve, of which the absciss represents the age, and the ordinates the corresponding decrements of life (see opposite). The inspection of such a diagram is sufficient to convince us of the great irregularity of the Carlisle Tables of Mortality, which must obviously have been formed, as they confessedly were, from observations on a very limited number of individuals, so that they exhibit a succession of different climacterics, after which the mortality is diminished; while about the age of 74 the curve that represents them towers to an incredible height, affording an expectation of longevity which some of the strongest advocates of those tables have abandoned in their practical applications, since they take their estimate of life, in advanced age, even lower than it is represented in the Northampton Tables.