Description: Health claims are not normally distributed. Claims Forecasting can be improved by understanding the entire distribution of plausible values of future claims, for example knowing there is an 80% chance future claims are between $340 and $375 PMPM. Confidence intervals around our estimates allow us to understand for each range around the best estimate (for example +/- 1%) what is the probability that future claims will fall in that range. Quantile Regression is a mathematical technique where you can estimate any percentile of the claims distribution you are looking for as a function of demographics, diagnosis indicators, prior cost variables, or other significant predictors. You can see which coefficients are important at different parts of the distribution. Individual and group distributions can be constructed. There are numerous applications in pricing and underwriting, stop loss, provider profiling, ACO target setting, allocation of group risk charges based on volatility, discounting strategy, and experience analysis.

Description: Python is the leading programming language for data science. Python programming is one skill that actuaries should acquire. It facilitates analytic work, and the available visualization tools help to communicate ideas. In this article, I use a traditional actuarial problem, mortality modeling, as an example.

Description: In How Significant Is Statistical Significance? The author discusses the p-value that is often used to determine significance. Sometimes we place too much reliance upon canned metrics and lose the ability to notice when something is mathematically sound but not sensible. The article provides three simple examples that require no complicated mathematics to follow yet provide a basis for some deep thought about statistical significance versus substantive significance.

Description: Process of building a predictive model and related considerations.

Description: This article is a basic introduction to information theory with the goal of explaining the maximal information coefficient.

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

Description: Mining Electronic Health Records using a Natural Language Processor.

Description: Read the Society of Actuaries' latest update about how health care executives view the future of predictive analytics in the health care industry.

Description: This article helps actuaries who may have excellent business ideas to take the first step of starting a business