Description: David shares his thoughts on using Microsoft's High Performance Computing Server, or HPCS, to cluster computer resources, improve timely performance, and reduce actuarial modeling costs.

Description: This paper proposes to put the environment into financial markets. It explains how to do it, and why the financial approach is practically the only one able to stop and invert environmental degradation. The author concentrates on deforestation which is the largest environmental problem in the third world, and explains how to start the project and what kind of optimization problems should be solved for applications of the project.

Description: This presentation, session number 83CS at the 1999 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 16-18 in Seattle, is a preview of an actual Course 7. The presenters, two experienced researchers, lead the discussion and a demonstration of a case study from the modeling Course 7. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of soft computing applications in actuarial science. Soft computing refers to modes of computing in which precision is traded for tractability, robustness and ease of implementation.

Description: This presentation is a Teaching Session, number 38TS, from the 1999 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held September 23-24 in Los Angeles. The instructors provide an introduction into how complex adaptive systems [CAS] can be applied to solve actuarial problems. They provide a general overview of CAS, including genetic algorithms, neural network, nonlinear modeling, and agent-based modeling, provide recent examples of applications to business problems, and discuss how CAS approaches can be used to address actuarial pricing and valuation issues, such as modeling customer behavior. Discussion from participants is included.

Description: This paper is from Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1955 Volume 7, Number 17. The author notes that in mortality studies the ‘natural’ unit for exposures and deaths is number of lives, but often more insight is gained by use of other weights, such as face amount. In this paper, the author develops a method which, ‘by a combination of exposed to risk formulas, provides a comparatively simple procedure to permit consideration of weights which vary during the observation period.’

Description: This article discusses the need for a sophisticated modeling system capable of analyzing the impact of the variables present in pension plan projections and providing management with information which it may act upon.

Description: The basic principle introduced in this paper is that the expected value of receipts on any insurance policy is equal to the expected value of payouts. Using an expected value approach, rather than present values, offers an interesting conceptual framework which might provide a possible starting point in risk theory to consider statistical variation about these expected values.

Description: This document shows you how to set up modeling platforms and start to work with them. Used in conjunction with Complexity Science - An Introduction and Invitiation for Actuaries.