La mortalité actuelle en Europe. II. Classements et classifications

SUMMARY Automatic methods are used more frequently to describe, analyse and summarize demographic and social phenomena. In this paper, several different methods of classification are applied to our data (recent European life tables) to show how each may serve to illumine different matters. Some of the methods separate tables by sex, other group tables by sex for whole regions, yet others isolate the tables for several countries. Each of these has its own interest, but suffers from limitation, because it is automatic in its applications and also in the hypotheses which underlie the method.