Description: The Delphi method is a non-quantitative forecasting approach that is most useful when other forecasting techniques appear to have limited value. The Society of Actuaries (SOA) has had some impressive results from Delphi studies (even quoted in the Wall Street Journal for their uncanny accuracy on long-range predictions). Attend this session to learn about this effective, yet underutilized method of leveraging the wisdom of crowds.

Description: This session will cover clustering techniques generally (k-means, hierarchical), and how k-means have been used to segment policyholders using third party features such as credit scores to assess customer profitability.

Description: An introduction to creating Shiny web applications, with sample code available to reproduce the interactive application displayed in screenshots in the article.

Description: A discussion on machine learning and how it can be used for forecasting.

Description: If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to begin exploring data analytics, machine learning, and AI, Microsoft has created a number of Data Science Virtual Machine images which include many of the most popular ML/AI tools pre-installed. In this presentation, we will start from scratch and demonstrate how to get onto the Azure cloud, fire up and connect to a Data Science VM, upload data, and train a machine learning model. While this presentation will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud, many of the concepts should be directly applicable to AWS or GCP.

Description: The presenters will share information about: -Insights into causes of death through the use of predictive models, based on a reinsured U.S. life portfolio, using logistic regression models to understand three main causes of death: cancer, heart and external causes; -Opioid abuse is a widespread phenomenon with drug-related mortality rates rising steeply in the U.S. over the past two decades. But what does the most recent data tell U.S. about the outlook for Opioid-related mortality?; -'Deaths of despair' have been publicized as a cause for the poor performance of U.S. mortality in recent years. The presenters will be looking at the different causes under this label, their evolution and explore the drivers behind them.

Description: Overview of regularization and least angle regression approaches.

Description: This paper describes techniques that can be used to access any specific piece of information in Wikipedia, such as medical information.

Description: Crop insurance plays an important role in mitigating food production disasters and keeping a robust food production system in the United States. Crop insurance increases stability in food and fiber production, smoothing variability which would otherwise occur because of weather patterns and changes in international trade regulations and markets. Stability increases the ability of farmers to make long-term investments that increase production efficiency and keep productive land in agriculture.

Description: Read the August 2020 issue of Predictive Analytics and Futurism published by the Predictive Analytics and Futurism Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.