1The number of people who will die during the first period in the continuous-time model is measured by
the difference between an initial population of size 1 and the size of the population remaining alive after one
period, .
in MathFacts implies that
; therefore the proportion who
have died will be approximately
. Hence for small death rates, in order for the same
population to survive for one period in a continuous-time model with death rate
and the discrete-time
model with death rate
, one would need
.