Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Presenters discuss a method of mortality projection on various scenarios about terrorism that have been written by futurists given the events of Sept. 11. Attendees learn to use a futurism technique scenarios to address actuarial problems.

Description: Presented at June 2002 Spring Meeting. A noted expert with a degree from the graduate program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston-Clear Lake discusses long-term forecasting and planning, the future of information technology and technology transfer, strategic planning and the development of future scenarios.

Description: Review of The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day, by prominent statistician David J. Hand.

Description: The author discusses the review of a recent 2001 Wall Street Journal’s semiannual survey of economists’ forecasts, starting by asking if there is a simple way to summarize the results and to extract a consensus forecast, and from this extraction, determine when an individual forecast is significantly different from that of the consensus.This article is reprinted with permission. It last ran in the Jan. 10, 2001 issue of The La Jolla Economics newsletter.

Description: In this article, the author discusses earthquake modeling.

Description: This is an article that discusses Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work and its significance for actuaries.

Description: The author reviews the book, The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life, by Len Fisher. He provides his own interpretation of the power of the swarm and touts the book as a straightforward and informative introduction to various aspects of complexity science.

Description: This paper addresses rainfall insurance using financial derivatives. Usual modeling is done for temperature related products. The authors gathered rainfall data in Mexico City over a period of five decades. This showed that the time series data is stationary and normally distributed. Therefore, the authors applied a closed-form solution to value swaps, calls and puts, with and without limits. The model can be used for practical purpose of pricing rainfall derivatives. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2006.

Description: Two letters to the editor of Pension Section News. Both letters are responses to David Langer's comments which were published in the January 2006 Pension Section News regarding Social Security and its financial projections. From Pension Section News, April 2006, No. 61.

Description: A letter to the editor regarding how the Social Security trustees project Social Security costs: Is it actuarial science or politics? From Pension Section News, January 2006, No. 60.