Description: Description of the vast variety of predictive analytics topics covered by the Forecasting & Futurism section and introduction to the July 2015 issue of the newsletter.

Description: The article gives a brief history of the development of the Delphi method, and describes the use of the Delphi method in studies by the Society of Actuaries over the past 25 years.

Description: Provides details of the 2nd forecasting competition for the best model that predicts the Civilian Unemployment Rate 'UNRATE', measured on a monthly basis, from March-end 2012 through September-end 2012.

Description: This article describes the use of artificial society modeling to gauge the effect of insurance agent population and effectiveness on individual life insurance sales. This is part of an ongoing effort to extend the use of one type of agent-based modeling beyond health care, but is far from a practical application at this point.

Description: Jeff Sagarin is one of the most well-known figures in the sports analytics world, with his sports ratings appearing in USA Today for over 30 years. Few may know that he started his career in the actuarial world, even passing three exams before his sports ratings took off. This article explores the parallels between the challenges of developing sports rating systems and the challenges that actuaries face every day.

Description: In this article, we are going to discuss the AR model by making connections to time-dependent ordinary differential equations.