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: Looks at free and inexpensive resources for the novice in predictive analytics, covering the data analysis theory as well as the most commonly used languages/software used in the field.

Description: While many know that machine learning is a big deal and even have a general idea of what it is, many do not know what machine learning can do for them. As an alternative to citing achievements or explaining algorithms, this article outlines the challenges that occur in statistics and the solutions that machine learning offers. Some of those challenges include correlated predictors, missing data, data interaction, and prediction intervals. Corresponding solutions include regularization technics, missing value imputation with KNN, tree based models, and cluster analysis for backtesting.

Description: The newer predictive modeling tools are powerful but they work best when supported by a lot of computing power. Parallel processing is very powerful but often very difficult to implement. Dihui and Richard take us through the maze of options with H2O, SparkNet/MLib and Mahout. Which do you use for a generalized linear model (GLM), and which is better for high-volume data manipulation?

Description: An introduction of predictive modeling techniques that are applicable to insurance industry, including generalized linear model (GLM) and classification and regression tree model(CART). Other models such as data clustering, neural network, and support vector machine (SVM), are also briefly discussed.

Description: This article describes a method that can be useful when re-fitting a risk score model to a population of only moderate size. Learn how to use concepts like ridge regression to train a model with partial credibility.

Description: This article describes the history and in some respects, the future of Big Data, and the tools we can use to handle it for PM and for machine learning. One such tool is Vowpal Wabbit, which sounds like something from a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoon (“Dwat that wabbit”), but it really is a popular approach to process a dataset of any size, as there is no need to load all the data into memory. Big data is forcing us to enhance many of our tools. So is the increased actuarial usage of stochastic-in-stochastic analyses (nested stochastic processes), which can result in unacceptably long program run times. Many of our popular computer languages are not inherently well suited for parallel computations.