CTK Insights

When Tennyson wrote The Vision of Sin, Babbage read it. After doing so, it is said he wrote the following extraordinary letter to the poet:

"In your otherwise beautiful poem, there is a verse which reads:

'Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.'

"It must be manifest that, were this true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read:

'Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1¹/₁₆ is born.'

"Strictly speaking, this is not correct. The actual figure is a decimal so long that I cannot get it in the line, but I believe 1¹/₁₆ will be sufficiently accurate for poetry. I am etc."

The piece has been published in the Mathematical Gazette and reproduced in Chapter 5 (On the Average and Scatter by M. J. Moroney) of the 3rd volume of the World of Mathematics by James Newman.

The actual data is different (from US Census Bureau):

 (Figures may not add to totals due to rounding)

-------------------------------------------------
                                          Natural
Time unit       Births       Deaths      increase
-------------------------------------------------
Year       132,697,074   56,260,324    76,436,750
Month       11,058,090    4,688,360     6,369,729
Day            363,554      154,138       209,416
Hour            15,148        6,422         8,726
Minute             252          107           145
Second             4.2          1.8           2.4
-------------------------------------------------

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