Description: Six pointers about career advancement for actuaries, based on real life experiences from my 47 year career.

Description: A typical course has some "hard" parts. These "hard" parts are the places where weaker students begin to fail, lose interest, and give up. The paper introduces a metric by which to evaluate each course topic. High metric values indicate "hard parts" of courses. The paper recommends spending more course time on hard parts and less course time on easy parts. The paper also recommends using disclosure: Tell students - this part of the course is "hard" and they may feel uncomfortable which is why more time is being spent on it." This approach to hard parts works! Failure rates are significantly reduced, while retention, satisfaction, and student scores improve.

Description: The chairperson for the marketing and distribution section discusses the section welcome call and outline future topics and themes for the year head.

Description: Looking to the upcoming 2024 year and looking back at the 2023 year in the International Section.

Description: An overview of John Robinson's experience at the recently concluded annual meeting of the Caribbean Actuarial Association in Trinidad.

Description: Even in published scientific research, we find fraudulent data. What is an actuary to do? Let's consider our actuarial principles and standards of practice to question our data quality and truthfulness. In specific, the article addresses ASOP 56 on Modeling and considerations of model risk as well as ASOP 23 on Data Quality. Recent examples are given from a Harvard research fraud controversy as well as questionable sumo statistics.

Description: This article lists the leadership qualities which made U.S. Grant, an under appreciated historical figure, so successful.

Description: Sam dives into how his experience as both a leader and a musician provide insight into how micromanagement disrupts the flow of an organization much like a live musician who overly focuses on one component quickly loses the flow of a performance. What does the symphony of actions sound like at your organization?

Description: Chris Smith, vice chair of the Actuary of the Future section, had the privilege of attending the SOA Health meeting in Seattle for the first time this year. Read about his experience and thoughts on why you should plan to attend an SOA-sponsored conference for your career growth.

Description: Latest in series of articles exploring the adaptation of Buddhist philosophy to actuarial practice. This installment examines the challenges for actuaries in dealing with pain points in actuarial work, and how to best manage these forces so that the work remains aligned with professional standards.