On an Application of the Graphic Method to obtain a Graduated Mortality Table from a limited Experience, by means of Comparison with a Standard Table

Abstract

In a paper by the late Mr. Samuel Brown “On the Rate of Mortality and Marriage among Europeans in India” (J.I.A., xi, 1), reference is made to a method used by Griffith Davies to deduce rates of mortality from the records of the Madras Military Fund. It appears that Davies ascertained the average age of the lives in each of certain groups into which the experience naturally divided itself, and obtained the ratios which the actual deaths in the several groups bore to the corresponding number expected according to the Northampton Table at the average age. These ratios were then set out as ordinates corresponding to abscissae representing years of age, and a continuous curve was drawn in the usual way, by reading off which the graduated ratios for each age were obtained, and from these the graduated rates of mortality were at once formed.