Description: Why should actuaries care about non-quantitative considerations? We are the masters of accurate calculations, and our models should be based solely upon logic … right? Wrong! The touchy-feely holistic, irrational factors encountered so often in the real world, can wreak havoc upon a model that considers only rational logic. Our 2016 presidential election was a dramatic wake-up call to statisticians and actuaries that numbers alone are not always the determining factors in economic outcomes. Learn why this is true, and how you can adapt your models to better represent the real world, and gain competitive advantage.

Description: Discusses the three complexity science sessions at the Annual Meeting that were sponsored by the Section.

Description: Introduction to the topics of the issue; and anecdote regarding the value classical versus newer techniques.

Description: Summary of all issue articles, with theme of recognizing limits of classical actuarial methods.

Description: Each month in the media we learn of another set of jobs being automated into oblivion or replaced by disruptive technologies. We see taxi drivers replaced by Uber and Lyft now, and soon by self-driving cars. An Oxford University study of 702 occupations showed insurance underwriters in 698th place, with a 99% probability of computerization. They were safer for obsolescence by automation than only four occupations such as hand sewers and telemarketers.

Description: A discussion of the new goals and dimensions of the Forecasting & Futurism Newsletter.

Description: This article is a review of the book by Joshua Foer. It covers the history of memory techniques, the way a human brain organizes memory, and various problems and successes in memory recall. The author starts by interviewing memory savants, and learns from them that the ability to perform seemingly impossible memory tricks is simply a matter of studying and practicing proven techniques used for millennia. This review suggests that actuaries can benefit greatly from some of these techniques despite the availability of electronic hand-held devices to recall facts because the person who does not need to rely upon such devices can have a huge perceptual advantage in executive presentations.

Description: Actuaries provide special subject matter expertise to question (or validate) the results of data analytics models. Other quants often cannot do this.

Description: Alternative sources of learning available for free or at low cost if you wish to round out your F&F education about machine learning, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and the millennia of biological advances we draw from when we use these techniques.

Description: Review of an excellent new guide to passing actuarial exams. It was written by Roy Ju, who became an FSA while still a Junior in university.