Description: As a film major in college with a dream to shoot movies, it’s safe to say Michael had a nontraditional start to his career in predictive analytics.

Description: After a decade of traditional actuarial work in health care, David Sotelo was seeking a new kind of opportunity to make an impact. He found it at Collective Health, where he works with a team of actuaries and data scientists that use analytics to streamline health insurance.

Description: Increasing technology is available to create and disseminate educational resources worldwide. In response, this article advocates creation of open educational resources (OERs) that will benefit the actuarial profession with both recruitment and retention of members. Specifically, we describe OER contributions made at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and more recently through the ASTIN Academy, a working group of ASTIN, the non-life section of the International Actuarial Association. We advocate pushing boundaries and creating new ways of teaching effectively for the future. The innovative use of technology and open-source materials is a way to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion in the actuarial profession.

Description: View 2017 Kaggle Involvement Program Results.

Description: Early in his career, Ehren Nagel, FSA, MAAA, scoured through podcasts and articles about predictive analytics, long suspecting this was a field with potential for him.

Description: While many know that machine learning is a big deal and even have a general idea of what it is, many do not know what machine learning can do for them. As an alternative to citing achievements or explaining algorithms, this article outlines the challenges that occur in statistics and the solutions that machine learning offers. Some of those challenges include correlated predictors, missing data, data interaction, and prediction intervals. Corresponding solutions include regularization technics, missing value imputation with KNN, tree based models, and cluster analysis for backtesting.

Description: The work of Patrick Getzen and his team requires technical skills and strong problem-solving abilities to help them move quickly in a changing environment.

Description: Predictive analytics techniques help actuaries and their companies make better decisions in managing their business.

Description: A drive to push through the fear of failure is one of the traits that separates successful entrepreneurs from the pack. And as Nazir Valani learned early in his career, that drive is especially important when doubts come from people he looked to for encouragement.

Description: Yi-Ling Lin, FSA, MAAA, FCA, started the SOA’s Predictive Analytics Certificate Program to keep pace with the impact big data and predictive modeling is having on the health care industry