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Report of the proceedings at the Statistical Congress held at Brussels, 19th to 22nd September 1853

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

Samuel Brown
Samuel Brown*
Affiliation:
Institute of Actuaries
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Extract

The study of statistics is so peculiarly connected with the vocation and intellectual pursuits of the actuary, that I feel convinced there is no member of the Institute who will not be interested in a full report of the very important meeting recently held at Brussels. I apprehend that the real business of the actuary is the reasoning on all events to which the mathematics of probability can be applied, and reducing the conclusions to a form in which they can be practically used for the public benefit. His study is the doctrine of averages; and though his functions have been hitherto confined in a great measure to subjects relating to the assurance of human life, there are evidently many other topics to which, in time, his attention ought to be directed. The discovery of the mathematical laws of events will eventually be recognized as the sole means of bringing uncertainty to certainty, and out of irregularity deducing order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Institute of Actuaries , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , 1854 , pp. 93 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1854

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References

page 94 note * It has become the custom of late, for those who set themselves against mathematical conclusions in the doctrines of probability, to call themselves “the men of business”; as if theory and practice were necessarily opposed to each other. On the same principle, the physician who has studied most deeply the organization of the human frame and the disorders to which it is subject, is the last person whom we ought to consult in practice.