Description: Summary of the excellent Abstract serve provided to M&PD section members

Description: Three ways to ask for more support at work if you have ever found yourself overwhelmed by your to-do list at work and know you’re capable of doing the things on the list but wonder whether you SHOULD be doing some of them.

Description: Gaining people management skills from Captain D. Michael Abrashoff's book, "Its Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy"

Description: In the Leadership & Development Section’s Leadership Inspiration Contest, entrants were asked to tell us what inspired them to be a better actuarial leader. Here is the winning entry from the “Defining Moment / Event” category.

Description: Article focusing on points to consider to improve hiring.

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: Shapiro 1990 documented some of the criteria used by actuaries when selecting the assumptions for actuarial valuations. He noted, however, that many of these criteria are often were in conflict with one another. This paper uses expected utility theory to model this process of choosing actuarial assumption when faced with potentially conflicting criteria. The three criteria considered are prudence, best estimate and conservativeness.

Description: The October/November 2013 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: This is a presidential address to the Society of Actuaries by Gary Corbett. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1988, Vol. 40, Pt. 1.