An Elementary Treatise on Frequency Curves and Their Application (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from An Elementary Treatise on Frequency Curves and Their ApplicationThe fact that actuarial science is fundamentally a branch of biology rather than of mathematics is overlooked far more generally than ought to be the case. Most people, even those of education and wide culture, are inclined to look upon an actuary as a particularly crabbed, narrow, and intellectually dusty kind of mathematician. In reality his subject is one of the liveliest in the whole domain of biology, and none surpasses it in its practical interest and importance to mankind. Because, what the actuary is, or at least should be, trying always to formulate more and more definitely are the laws which determine the duration of human life. Why the actuary in fact is too often intellectually but little more than a sort of glorified computer, is really only the result of a defect in the teaching of biology in our colleges and universities. It has only lately come to be recognized anywhere that a biologist needed a substantial foundation in mathematics in order successfully to practice a biological profession. It is not too rash a prediction to say that presently the time is coming when no important actuarial post will be held by a mathematician who knows little or no biology. The vigor and originality of his biological outlook will be valued as highly as the rigidity of his mathematical substructure now is.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.