Description: With the convergence and consolidation of the financial services industry, the advent of new technologies and the Internet, and increased focus on the customer, actuaries are facing a brand new set of challenges. This editorial prefaces the articles in this issue that point out some key challenges and opportunities facing today’s actuaries.

Description: Math puzzles highlighting mathematical oddities.

Description: This article is a brief review of the book “Crime by Computer,” by Donn B. Parker. If you have from time to time become concerned about the security of computer programs records and transactions, this book will give little comfort.

Description: Insurance professionals are seeing the industry change before their very eyes, and many are being forced to change with it. But it seems those pushed and pushing the most are those touched directly by the Internet’s World Wide Web. In this article, seven executives and professionals are interviewed about their work on this new fast track. They sometimes had widely varying opinions, but they agreed on two points: the Web is rapidly forcing a restructuring of the way insurance business is done, and this will create new and perhaps more opportunities for actuaries.

Description: This is a summary of the biography of Charles Babbage, 1791-1871, much of whose life was devoted to inventing and constructing machines to free actuaries and other sufferers from the drudgery of repetitive arithmetic.

Description: This article gives an historical description of calculating and tabulating equipment used by, and is some cases developed by, actuaries in their work.

Description: This article gives an overview of the new SOA website and statistics on its usage plus looks at other actuarial sites, and describes the prevalent search engines.