Description: Opinion piece about when, how, and why actuaries need approximations.

Description: Provides a simplified explanation of the modeling and statistical terms currently in use by the profession, and provides a list of publications worth reading in regards to complexity science plus a list of free software.

Description: Discusses the three complexity science sessions at the Annual Meeting that were sponsored by the Section.

Description: Commentary on practical observations resulting from constructing and running Economic Capital models. Possible standardization of assumptions and result interpretation are morphing even though use of E.C. models has now been around for years.

Description: Introduces the concept of total risk analysis, a methodology used to answer questions like "what are the chances we will lose more than $1 million"

Description: This article lays conceptual foundations associated with projecting investment-related discretionary elements of various life insurance and annuity products. It outlines potential implementation approaches that may be appropriate when calculations are performed in a risk-neutral setting. The article concludes that crediting rates in risk-neutral models can be projected as in real-world models, except that the modeled provision for expected credit losses should be modified to equal real-world expected losses initially, but over the projection reflect management’s evolving expectation, moving ultimately to risk neutral expected losses.

Description: In this article, we talk to Lei Rao-Knight, FSA, Vice President and Actuary at Prudential Financial. Lei discusses her model development experience in the Modeling Center of Excellence.

Description: Announcement of an upcoming 2003 Stochastic Modeling Symposium.

Description: The author discusses the two-part presentation on complexity science tools at the SOA Annual Meeting October 2010. He explains that presentations went back to basics with explanations about the difference between modeling tools used to employ deterministic methods for classical actuarial models.

Description: Discusses the RAND function in Excel and alternatives for generating random numbers.