Description: Don’t Manage Your Time Maximize Your Time by Dan Coughlin from The Stepping Stone Newsletter, January 2004, Issue No. 13.

Description: This article explains how to create more maintainable models using abstractions by relating it to option, machine learning and machine intelligence models.

Description: In physics and engineering education, Fermi problems require solutions based on good approximate calculations with little or no actual data, involving making justified guesses and deducing bounds without using sophisticated tools. The idea of Fermi problems are of particular relevance to today's actuaries, as pricing, reserving, and financial reporting involve more and more complex stochastic components. The paper discusses some approximate solutions developed in academia in the spirit of Fermi problems.

Description: Summary of the non-routine business transacted at meetings of the Executive Committee of the Society of Actuaries on Dec. 13, 1979 and the Board of Governors on Jan. 24, 1980

Description: Discusses the evolution of the Valuation Actuaries Symposium since the 1980s.

Description: This article explains the replacement of the TSA with the North American Actuarial Journal. It gives a chart showing the differences between the two journals and also names the editorial board of the NAAJ.

Description: This newsletter column by the Modeling Section Chair reflects on his attendance at the 2015 Actuarial Research Conference in Toronto and the relationships between practicing actuaries in industry and those in academia, and specifically those involved in research. How can we help promote academics research that is effective and relevant for practical use? Hopefully the Modeling Section might facilitate that effort.

Description: Noteworthy Reads has a simple aim—to inform our readers of good sources on models; specifically, to point out sources beyond what we can include in a newsletter. Noteworthy Reads will select a few and provide mini-reviews.

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.