On the Law of Mortality

Abstract

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.