General Average (continued in v.13)

In the month of June, 1862, after the meeting of the second International General Average Congress held in London, a committee was constituted, “for the purpose of establishing one uniform system of general average throughout the mercantile world,” The meeting of the council of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held in York in the autumn of 1864, set apart three days for the consideration of this branch of jurisprudence; and the 26th of September and two following days were occupied with the discussion of the various disputed points connected with the subject, under the presidencies of Sir James Wilde and Sir Fitzroy Kelly. The last-named gentleman, in closing the sitting, in the course of his speech gave his opinion as to the course to be pursued in order to give the force of law to the amendments which had been proposed, with the view to promote the uniformity which is so desirable in connection with the adjustment of claims for general average. He considered that “in order to obtain a legislative sanction to the code which had just been completed, it would be advisable to obtain the distinct approval of the leading commercial bodies, particularly the Chambers of Commerce in the great towns; and to obtain, if possible, assurances on the part of the foreign Governments that they would be prepared to adopt the code upon its adoption in this country. …If possible, the code or rules should be made a Government measure; failing this, it should be entrusted to at least two independent members, one of whom must be a mercantile man, representing a mercantile constituency, and the other a lawyer of eminence; and that it would be desirable to go to work at once, while the public interest was alive to the measure.”

On the Principles to be observed in the Construction of Mortality Tables

The remarks which I have to offer for the consideration of this meeting have reference not to the deduction of the probabilities of living and dying from the facts observed, but to the mode of dealing with those probabilities, in their rough state, with the view of rendering them fit for the purpose for which they may ultimately be required.

On the Calculation of Single Life Contingencies (Part I)

It is the object of the present article to put together a number of formulae which it may be useful to the actuary to find in one place. At the same time it may show all persons who possess an elementary knowledge of algebra, that they may, with no great amount of tables, and processes of very easy application, learn to compute the value of any benefit in which the duration of one life only is concerned. The same principles, with more extensive tables, apply to cases in which two or more lives are involved.

On the Summation of Divergent Series

In the last Number I gave the most elementary view I could arrive at of Arbogast's method of development. In the communication following I saw that Mr. Peter Gray had referred to Stirling's theorem; and this suggested that it might be useful to give, by means of common algebra only, an account of the two most important cases of summation of many terms of a divergent series.

A Budget of Paradoxes (Continued from p. 232)

Demonville.—A Frenchman's Christian name is his own secret, unless there be two of the surname. M. Demonville is a very good instance of the difference between a French and English discoverer. In England there is a public to listen to discoveries in mathematical subjects made without mathematics: a public which will hear, and wonder, and think it possible that the pretensions of the discoverer have some foundation. The unnoticed man may possibly be right: and the old country-town reputation which I once heard of, attaching to a man who “had written a book about the signs of the zodiac which all the philosophers in London could not answer,” is fame as far it goes. Accordingly, we have plenty of discoverers, who, even in astronomy, pronounce the learned in error because of mathematics.