Description: This section contains reviews for the following books, Introduction to the Mathematics of Demography by Robert Brown, A Tale of Two Captains by John Baynes and Hugh Maclean, Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse by Lawrence Goodheart, The Federal Data Base Finder by Matthew Lesko and the Guardian Life Insurance Company, 1860-1920, A History of a German-American Enterprise by Anita Rapone. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1991, Vol. 43.

Description: This session is from the 1976 Washington D.C. Meeting and discusses qualitative and quantitative models for forecasting. The session is a general teaching session and not for experts.

Description: These are discussions of the following research papers: 1. 'Actuarial Functions as Expected Values' by John A. Fibiger and Stephen G. Kellison, and 2. 'A New Look at Gain and Loss Analysis' by Arthur W. Anderson. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1971, Vol. 23, Pt. 1, No. 66 AB.

Description: To become a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, an applicant must submit satisfactory evidence that he has met specified requirements in both education and experience. This panel discussions addresses whether or not the education requirement can be satisfied by means other than by passing specified examinations of the Society of Actuaries or of the Casualty Actuarial Society. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1970, Vol. 22, Pt. 2, No. 64.

Description: Concomitant with the industrial revolution, the function of providing old age income shifted from families and local institutions to government social security and private pension plans. The history of this change in the U.K. and U.S. is reviewed. A simple mathematical model provides insights into the role played by three rates [the rate of increase of the working population, the time preference rate, and the rate of real wage growth] in determining optimum funding policy. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, Vol. 2.

Description: This presentation, session number 80PD, took place at the 1999 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 16-18 in Seattle. The panelists discuss the far-reaching, and not fully understood, proposals for fundamentally changing Social Security, including proposals from Congress, private individuals and groups, and by members of the recent Advisory Council on Social Security. They include “privatizing” Social Security, partially or fully, and changing the investment policy to allow trust fund investments in private securities. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: This paper discusses the Bayesian graduation method of Kimeldorf and Jones and develops methods for managing four technical problems in their method. It also includes a discussion of the paper. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1977, Vol. 29.

Description: In this paper we shall present our results in terms of the estimation of human mortality rates, but the results carry over to other applications. We shall discuss a Bayesian model that encompasses both graduation [smoothing] and prediction.

Description: This session from the 1983 SOA Hollywood, Florida Meeting explains the need for a completely new text book with a more modern approach for life contingencies or actuarial mathematics to replace the book by Jordan. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 9, No. 4.

Description: In this paper two theorems concerning the optimality of the perfect-fit and perfect-smoothness graduations are proved. Two examples are presented and some difficulties with regard to computational feasibility are reviewed. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1978, Vol. 30.