Description: Often actuarial practitioners are faced with working with data that is less than ideal. The data may be observed with gaps in it, a model may suggest variables that are observed at different frequencies, and sometimes predictive analytic results are very fragile to the inclusion or omission of just a few observations in the sample. Data, particularly big data, are often "messy" and something must be done about it. What is the actuary to do about these very practical matters? These types of questions are what this presentation is intended to address. Concerns on missing data, outliers, nonlinearity, mixed-frequency, cross-correlations are illustrated using real datasets in the Asia-Pacific countries. Some possible solutions to the messy data problems will be discussed.

Description: You’ve built or updated a predictive model. Is it any good? How can you interpret and understand its predictions? How does it compare to alternative models? This session will look at traditional and non-traditional ways of validating predictive models, with examples from case studies.

Description: Discussion of machine learning applications currently being used to augment traditional actuarial modeling in the life insurance industry. This includes data science techniques for: Quantifying and explaining differences between model versions or reporting periods Building proxy models for actuarial model output using machine learning One-class classification for data integrity checks Applications of unsupervised learning (e.g., clustering and principal components analysis) to reduce model run time