Description: This article is about the Course 8 series. Course 8 provides candidates with essential advanced specialized education in one of seven practice areas: individual insurance, group life and health, managed care, U.S. pensions, Canadian pensions, finance, and investments.

Description: A panel of appointed actuaries, along with substantial audience participation, shares perspectives and practical experience in fulfilling the duties and responsibilities of the appointed actuary. Session 18OF of the 2005 Valuation Actuary Symposium.

Description: This is a book review of 'Pension Mathematics for Actuaries' by Arthur W. Anderson. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1985, Vol. 37.

Description: This template was created as a tool to help brainstorm ideas for session topics that are aligned with the SOA Competency Framework. The following table lists the eight core SOA competencies identified by the membership as being key to actuarial success. Every meeting topic will fall into one or more of the competencies. Aligning meetings with the competency framework will help create better professional development offerings to support member needs.

Description: This paper addresses the extension of the theory of life contingencies to a stochastic interest environment and its application to solvency valuation and surplus. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1990, Vol. 42.

Description: The SOA's Competency Framework for Actuaries is a tool to help actuaries make decisions related to their individual professional development and career management plans. It applies systematic, sound approaches to selecting professional development opportunities, focusing on the skills needed to go beyond technical and specific actuarial analysis. This is an Excel file that facilitates that process by providing a personal planning workbook.

Description: This article studies the syllabus as a dynamic, interactive teaching tool that informs and is informed by both solutions of complex course problems and student difficulties with these problems.

Description: This presentation proposes a solution to the student actuarial paradox “I mastered the syllabus but failed the exam,” by utilizing the two-dimensional syllabus vehicle which pedagogically focuses on the two dimensions of content and problem difficulty. This presentation advocates the PMR characterization of three levels of problems difficulty: Plug-ins (easy), Monkey-wrench (intermediate), and Research-type(hard) questions. PMR was developed by examining difficulty levels in SOA exams, and problems of various software vendors. The author's students routinely score high on the SOA FM exam; it is hoped that these methods will assist other instructors in their quest for good pedagogy. Very briefly: “Plug-ins,” refer to multi-part problems, for example, calculating the price of an annuity that is first increasing and then level; “Monkey-wrench” problems specifically refer to plug-in multi-part problems where one component is a monkey-wrench, an issue the candidate has not previously encountered. It might be a non-typical modeling or it might be a non-typical algebraic simplification or it might be an unexpected integration of distinct modules in a manner that the candidate has not yet seen. “Research-type questions” refer to problems requiring some type of experimentation for example, looking at initial cases, seeing a pattern and then applying methods

Description: Discusses time-until-death random variables, present-value random variables, and prospective-loss random variables that are used in the new book 'Actuarial Mathematics.' From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 4B.

Description: The October/November 2015 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.