ABSTRACT

Duration of life of an individual person, and that is the subject of our book, is considered in mathematical demography as a random variable.

This, of course, is not the only possible point of view on duration of human life. There is something simplistic and vulgar in such a point of view. In M. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (see English translation Bulgakov [1992]), in a dialog between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua, there is the following passage:

“What would you have me to swear by?” enquired the unbound prisoner with great urgency.