Abstract
Oscar Rogers and Arthur Hunter surely subscribed to the above belief of their scientific contemporary Lord Kelvin when they published in 1919 their Numerical Method of Determining the Value of Risks for Insurance. Regarding the need for actual mortality data, they went so far as to say, ‘if a person who is called upon to give an expert judgment of the value of a risk does not have data upon which to base a rating for the special hazard involved, he is equally unable to express an expert judgment anyhow.’2 A bold statement perhaps, but Rogers and Hunter were zealous promoters of the general application of quantitative risk assessment to life insurance.
When you cannot measure [what you are describing], when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.1
Lord Kelvin
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© 2006 Dr R. D. C. Brackenridge, Dr Richard S. Croxson, Dr Ross Mackenzie
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Kita, M.W. (2006). The Rating of Substandard Lives. In: Brackenridge, R.D.C., Croxson, R.S., MacKenzie, R. (eds) Brackenridge’s Medical Selection of Life Risks. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-72324-9_5
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