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Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

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Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#211

Post by ineedasername »

lmm wrote: post #169
bobsmooth wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the other comments, it should be pointed out that not everyone needs car insurance but everyone will require medical attention at some point.

That's not true though? It's entirely possible to be healthy right up until the moment you die and never get into a situation that a doctor or hospital could help with.

The baby "you" needed health insurance the moment it took it's first breath and let out a shriek of terror due to its suddenly change in circumstances. I know from experience: Until my wife gave birth, all the claims were for here. Once born, hospital bills were partitioned into those for my wife and those for my newborn.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#212

Post by thaumasiotes »

heavyset_go wrote: post #190
gurchik wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it. I had a high deductible health insurance plan and had a serious injury that required a hospital stay. Even though I paid for all of it before meeting my deductible, it was still cheaper than the medical costs I have spent on one of my three pets who is actually young and very healthy, but accidents happen.

A family member's dog's ACL surgery cost more than the ACL surgery they themselves got a few years before. Pet medicine is filled by pharmacies and costs as much as human medicine does. It's nuts.

What's supposed to be nuts about that? The surgery costs the same no matter whether you want me to do it to a dog or a person. The pills cost the same whether you want to feed them to a dog or a person. That's exactly what you'd expect.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#213

Post by specialist »

dragonwriter wrote: post #111
Buge wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't see a scam anywhere. They are telling the government they will pay out if the insured party is at fault for an accident, but in some (many?) cases they don't actually pay out. That sounds like a scam to me.

> They are telling the government they will pay out if the insured party is at fault for an accident No, they aren't. They are telling the government and their customer they will pay out if the insured party is found to be legally liable for injury or property damage while driving. (That is, in exactly the situations where the customer would legally be obligated to pay.) They are also telling their customer that they…

In this case, who is legally liable?

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#214

Post by meztez »

Hated/Loved doing the exams to get my FCAS. It allowed me to explore my mental capacity. It teaches you how to learn fast, how to memorize, how to be quick at solving problems.

It has been a while, but after getting involved with the exam question writing/grading part, I felt the CAS was too entrenched in their processes. I stopped paying my dues since I did not plan to sign any acturial statement anyway.

I now do data engineering for other actuaries and maintain our tech stack. Think rating engine and ML in production. Code is mostly on github now, we have peer reviews, deploy to kubernetes. It is really is no different than SWE, except we know a lot more about the business side.

Life is great work wise.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#215

Post by TheRealNGenius »

ffwacom wrote: post #42
not-my-account wrote: post #16

Is the answer to the question at the top 0.33? let pc = purchased_collision, pd = purchased_disability we have: 2 * P(pc) = P(pd) P(pc & pd) = 0.15 so P(pc) * P(pd) = 0.15 2 P(pc)^2 = 0.15 --> P(pc) = 0.274, P(pd) = 0.548 So the probability of neither pc nor pd is !P(pc | pd) = 1 - P(pc) - P(pd) + P(pc & pd) = 0.328 ~= 0.33? The addition of P(pc & pd) was to take account of the double counting of pc and pd. Please le…

I got the same. When do we start as actuaries?

I mean, these probably weren't that hard. I was able to solve all of them with just a standard calculator that could do sqrt.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#216

Post by TheRealNGenius »

Moodles wrote: post #148

The red/blue urn question in the article isn't super duper hard right? It's at a level where it's a very hard question (but still doable) for a 16 year old high schooler I think? b = number of blue balls in second urn. P(both same color) = P(both blue) + P(both red) = P(first urn red) * P(second urn red) + P(first urn blue) * P(second urn blue) 0.44 = 4/10 * 16/(16+b) + 6/10 * b/(16+b) Multiply both sides by 10(16+b)…

I just plugged in numbers until I got it to be .44. I tried 2, 3, and 4, and then found the answer without needing to simplify

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#217

Post by aqualinux »

boppo1 wrote: post #203
aqualinux wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incumbent insurance companies maintain their position in the market through having large amounts of capital which lets them ultimately offer lower premiums than a new competitor entering the market which may have less capital. This means the legacy insurance companies don't need to prioritise investing in innovation to maintain their position, hence the old companies stay around.

Could this be one of the few cases where a DAO actually has a real world application?

Maybe, the insurer would still needs a claims-handling staff overhead to verify a claim made is valid. And perhaps also an underwriting team to assess the risk before the start of a policy. The DAO could replace the paperwork/emails, but I imagine that is only a small expense.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#218

Post by laichzeit0 »

unixhero wrote: post #147

The real question I want to know is; how applicable are the hard earned skills elsewhere, say data science?

Probability and statistics is applicable everywhere. But the actuarial route is overly specialised for the insurance industry.

The ideal data science degree would be computer science and statistics combined. Drop compilers, formal methods, etc. Keep databases, PL, AI/ML, data structures & algos. From stats you get probability, inference, survival analysis, stochastic processes, design of experiments, etc. Throw in some operations research (optimisation) while you’re at it. Comp Sci, Financial Math, Statistics all do the same mathematical track anyway: LA, Calc, Real analysis, Discrete math. I would include a good course covering advanced probability so something based on measure theory.

Now you have a general Data Science background to apply in any field.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#219

Post by ak217 »

d136o wrote: post #149
poulsbohemian wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's exactly it. I know I've certainly spent spare brain cycles considering it, and there seem to be a number of startups trying to create cheaper title insurance, but it's not clear to me how to really solve the issue. Basically it's a human behavior and record keeping problem. You have to have perfect records, and you hope some estranged cousin doesn't magically popup with a deed someday claiming to own you…

When we bought our house, after our down payment and on our way to closing I asked a question to the escrow/title insurance person: * the disclosures show two slightly different figures for the dimensions of the lot, which one is it? (County mapped shows Width W and another owner provided map showed W-1ft or something like that) Instead of doing anything to try to figure it out, this title insurance company (also doi…

The state of that industry is absolutely incredible to me. Throughout the whole home purchase process all I can see is people trying to cover their ass and do the absolute minimum amount of work possible. I understand that they want to avoid getting sued, but the whole process (sell side agency, brokerage, buy side agency, title, home insurance, financing, escrow, whatever) is just agonizing every step of the way. I see a great opportunity for a vertically integrated agency that could own as much of the process as possible and lower the fees, but only admit "easy" clients who don't have any custom needs.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#220

Post by gruez »

explodingman wrote: post #165
dragonwriter wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The appropriate course is to sue the other driver directly and ignore the insurance company. Yes, that's how you formally sue in an accident. It's not the hack you think it is, though, the insurance company defends the lawsuit, that's part of the insurance agreement. It's also specifically what OP was unwilling to do which resulted in the insurance company not paying, and why any “the judge should...” is missing th…

> If there was even the slightest expectation there would be a judge, Okay, I'm confused. My anecdote, which comes from Australia, indicates a 100% expectation of a judge. Are you saying that in Texas, a $US6K matter is likely to be considered too vexatious/trivial to receive a trial? Or is it actually possible to decline a lawsuit in the USA? This is an "explain it to me like I'm five years old" moment. I really don…

>Okay, I'm confused. My anecdote, which comes from Australia, indicates a 100% expectation of a judge. Are you saying that in Texas, a $US6K matter is likely to be considered too vexatious/trivial to receive a trial?

His point is that the OP (ie. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29719047) is refusing to sue, so there's no case to bring before a court. Everything else is irrelevant. Even if you'll obviously win, but you don't sue, it's not the state's job to file lawsuits for you.

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