It will be appreciated that inflation is not a purely war-time or post-war phenomenon. The last two wars have considerably increased the rate of inflation, but the process has been more or less continuous for a very long time. Any appreciable degree of inflation can have very far-reaching effects on the accounts of a trading company. It is the intention of this paper to consider the effects of inflation on the Balance Sheet and the Profit and Loss Account and on the interpretation of the figures in these accounts after inflation has done its work, and to consider the extent to which such accounts give a true picture to the Company's Board of Directors and Shareholders.

The preparation of accounts has as its purpose the provision of information to shareholders and to those whose duty it is to control the policy and to undertake the day-to-day management. The needs of the two groups vary to some extent, particularly as regards volume and detail of information. In both cases, however, the immediate aim of accountancy is the provision of a summary record of financial progress during (usually) a year's operations and of financial standing at the end of the period. The standard method of preparing this record uses only actual past figures of income and expenditure, expressed in units of currency.

The reassurance of life assurance policies is readily accepted by us all as an essential, though a minor, part of Life Assurance. Each office tends to have its own traditional approach to this problem, coloured very often by its attitude to the general problem of underwriting. I think that a discussion on reassurance falls naturally into two parts. First, what amount should be retained for an office's own account? Secondly, having determined the retention, how should the reassurance be effected?

The scientific transaction of Life Assurance began in 1762 with the ‘Equitable’, but, until other Life Offices began to issue permanent policies, there was no scope for reassurance; nor, probably, was there much demand for very large policies. It must be remembered, of course, that in those days £100 was a considerable sum of money. As Life Offices grew and multiplied, reassurance became more common as will be learned by the references to it in the early numbers of J.I.A. Reference should be made to G. T. Foster's paper in J.I.A. 72, 337, where it is pointed out that, one hundred years ago, reassurances were looked at with considerable suspicion; this attitude still exists to some extent.

When it comes to cricket we are all statisticians. Indeed, a daily paper has only to use the heading ‘The Averages’ for every (male) reader to understand that he will find below the batting and bowling averages of first-class cricketers. Most schoolboys take a keen interest in these figures and many soon begin to realize that they are not an altogether satisfactory means of comparing the prowess of individual players. It is noted, for instance, that an opening batsman has, on the whole, more dangerous bowling to cope with than one who goes in fifth or sixth wicket down; and that a bowler who secures cheap wickets among ‘tail-enders’ is flattered as compared with an opening bowler who has very different opposition.

The sales of Wisden bear ample evidence of the fascination of cricket records. Sir William Elderton (1945) and George H. Wood (1945) have published enlightening analyses of batsmen's performances, which are but samples of the delights to be found in browsing among these records. Not only does such work throw new light on the published figures, but it often leads to clearer ideas on statistical analysis and interpretation in general. Understanding of the effects of statistical analysis is much facilitated by the relatively clear-cut nature of the data, which, despite ambiguities and unrecorded factors such as pitch, weather and tactics, are less subject to confusing factors than most statistical data.

Given an ordered sequence consisting of fixed numbers of A's and B's, it is sometimes necessary to test whether these letters occur in a random order. In particular situations A and B may represent positive and negative signs, heads and tails of a coin, defective and effective parts, wet and dry years, and so on. Many tests of randomness are available, but this note only deals with two of the possible tests. One of these tests is described by Johnson & Tetley in their Statistics text-book (vol. 2, p. 238), where the sequence of positive and negative signs of the deviations between actual and expected deaths in a mortality table graduation is investigated for randomness. However, it is not made plain in the official text-book exactly what aspect of randomness is being tested; it is hoped that this note will make the matter clear.

The situation to which both the tests described below are to be applied is as follows. Given fixed numbers n1 of A's and n2 of B's arranged in an ordered sequence, it is found that the particular sequence observed contains g1 groups of consecutive A's and g2 groups of consecutive B's.