Insights and Ideas from the American Academy of Actuaries
Contingencies
Features
A Valuable Piece of the Puzzle
Shrewd companies stand to benefit from hiring neurodiverse actuaries By Timothy J. Adams The Harvard Business Review published an article in 2017 titled "Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage." The article began with an anecdote about a man...
Model Behavior—Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Actuarial Science
By Jay Vadiveloo I recently attended a seminar on artificial intelligence (AI) by Ajay Agrawal, Ph.D. I think Agrawal's book, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018), is a must-read...Departments
Special Section
Where Are the Whip-Makers? How technology is changing the workplace of tomorrow.
By R. Greg Szrama III
The world around us changes quickly. We've all seen those booklets that highlight how different the world felt when we were born-the cost of bread, a movie ticket, a car or a house, or the tuition at prominent universities....
Special Section
The Open-Source Approach to Collaboration
Git was created by Linus Torvald in 2005 to support the development of Linux,[1] which in 2016 ran an estimated 67 percent of web servers. Android runs on Linux. Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia all run on Linux.[2] It is hard to understate the...
Inside Track
Different Perspectives, Different Strengths
By Eric P. Harding
I have a bit of a confession to make. I'm a 40-something professional who enjoys video games.
I'm not talking about first-person shooters, or sports games, or fighting games-though I'm not casting any aspersions toward...
President’s Message
The Voice
By Shawna Ackerman
While I'm not a television-watcher, I am aware of the immensely popular show "The Voice," which brings together celebrity judges and aspiring stars. The judges are each looking for a unique voice to mentor, with the possibility...
Commentary
Zen and the Art of Actuarial Science
By James A. Kenney
[Editor's note: Kenney is a practicing Zen Buddhist. The views hereunder are his own.]
There is a deep and abiding urgency in Buddhism about death. The last straw that led Gautama Siddhartha to go off after Enlightenment was...
Up To Code
Getting Political—Can an Actuary Weigh In on Thorny Issues?
By Alice Rosenblatt
It's still a long time until the November 2020 elections, and we can expect a lot of political news before we reach the day itself. Health care, pensions, social insurance programs, and other issues of interest to actuaries...
Tradecraft
What Does It Mean to Be ‘Reasonable’?
By Stephen A. Alpert
One of the more difficult judgments an actuary must make is being "reasonable." In addition to applying our training, experience, and professionalism, we also need to navigate the definitions and expectations that...
Crossword
Dead Reckoning
By Warren Manners
Across
Down
1
A month of the Hindu year
1
NYPD broadcasts
6
Out for the night
2
Soil
10
Thunderbirds grp.
3
On the safe side
14
Huzzah!
4
Sphere
19
Locales for...
Cryptic Puzzle
Mapping Your Way
By Tom Toce
Once again we have a puzzle created by Bob Fink and Jerry Miccolis. Bob designed the grid and wrote most of the clues; Jerry came up with a good number of clues. Eric Klis and I helped with editorial comments and test solving.
In...
Puzzles
The Election
By Joshua Feldman
When not writing or grading puzzles for Contingencies, for the past few years I have had a second extracurricular actuarial activity take up my time:
I am the president of the Central State Actuarial Forum (CSAF), a proud...
End Paper
Simplicity Through Complexity
By Sam Gutterman
I rarely see things in black-and-white terms. Rather, I always seem to focus on the shades of gray-advantages and costs, weighing a set of considerations.
Maybe I got into this habit while studying for actuarial essay exams. I...
