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On the Law of Mortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

William Matthew Makeham*
Affiliation:
Institute of Actuaries

Extract

In the following pages I shall have frequent occasion to avail myself of a term which the progress of the analysis of life contingencies has rendered indispensable, but which is not found in any of the standard elementary works in that science. I think, therefore, that I cannot better commence this paper than by an attempt to give an explanation of the expression “force of mortality,” sufficiently ample to obviate any difficulties which might otherwise be experienced on this score.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1867

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References

page 338 note * The differences are those of the function log Lx.

page 339 note * Hitherto the accent has been used to distinguish the “partial” from the “total” forces of mortality, but as we have now done with this branch of the subject, no confusion will be caused by using it to denote (as it will be used henceforth) the corrected values of the function to which it is applied.

page 353 note * Of course any period whatever may be taken as the unit of time.