Description: The Cauchy integral formula is applied to derive various results on divided differences.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a practical method for interpolation and smoothing and give a number of numerical examples using the method. The method is a variation of the Whittaker-Henderson method. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a new approximation to determine contingency reserves against adverse mortality experience for a portfolio of life annuity contracts.

Description: This paper presents a few formulaic examples displaying the advantages of geometric methods over arithmetic methods and provides some theorems proving the increased accuracy geometric methods can provide for interpolation or extrapolation

Description: This paper discusses a class of asymmetric distributions arising in a random summation scheme. Members of the class are called asymmetric Laplace distributions as the standard Laplace distributions, which are symmetric, constitute a proper subclass. Among distributions which are limits in random summation schemes, asymmetric Laplace distributions play an analogous role to that of normal distributions among distributional limits of non-random sums. Asymmetric LaPlace laws are more 'peaky' and have heavier tails than normal laws. They have stability properties and are convenient in applications, as their densities have explicit forms and estimation procedures are easily implemented. Anticipating increasing interest in this class of distributions, the authors present statistical tools which can be utilized in practice, including algorithms for simulation and estimation. They also discuss more general classes of distributions, where asymmetric Laplace distributions appear as special cases.

Description: Presents a theoretical basis for a computerized methodology for estimating biological age - a measure of time to death.

Description: This paper presents simple Bayesian graduation models that substantially ease the prior elicitation burden, and also describes a Monte Carlo integration approach that greatly reduces the computational load.

Description: This paper presents an unbiased, consistent and asymptotically efficient estimator based on importance sampling variance reduction technique in the framework of Monte Carlo simulation methods. It shows that the estimator is highly efficient in terms of number of computations. Using the Pollaczeck-Khinchine formula, the authors extend the use of the estimator to the calculation of ultimate ruin probabilities in the context of the Classical case of Risk Theory and compare their results with recent actuarial literature using the same methodology.

Description: This paper presents an analysis of mortality in a sample of 441adults aged 55 to 85 at baseline, who were observed for eight years. The study was initiated for the purpose of analyzing age-related changes in a variety of physical variables and their impact on functional independence. The modeling approach is discussed and the factors which were most significantly related to mortality.

Description: This note describes a mortality investigation procedure in which the expected mortality applicable to each new policy for a period of about three years after issue is estimated by use of persistency factors. Discussions of this paper are included.