Description: The PA Symposium will be an immersive experience benefiting entry level actuaries through senior managers, and PA newbies through advanced practitioners.

Description: Editorial for the December 2019 print edition of Predictive Analytics & Futurism newsletter describing the large number of informational resources available to PAF Section members.

Description: There is a growing amount of “off-balance sheet” talent in the US and Global workforce. This spans from consultants and contractors, to gig workers and the crowd (both curated crowd and open crowd). One such example is Uber and Lyft workers. Insurance companies and the Actuarial profession have started to experiment with platforms such as Kaggle and this will continue to grow and evolve. This article explores these new sources of talent for companies, the implications to the actuarial function, benefits and challenges of the evolving workforce.

Description: Machine learning models are not black-boxes; these models can easily be interpreted using tools like SHAP, LIME and Anchor. These tools can facilitate the understanding of the model and the business problem. We can used these tools to build better models and communicate how predictions are generated. This article demonstrates their use in a mortality model.

Description: This article explores the use of Generalized Additive Models and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines to model nonlinear relationships in a linear response model. These models use supervised methods to determine the optimal shape of the predictors in the model. Users are provided an example use case so that they may get started right away building models to explore complex relationships in new ways.

Description: This article discusses how to handle semisupervised data. This type of data might have a large number of observations, yet a small number of labels.

Description: The Delphi Method is discussed in detail. The method attempts to filter out the consensus bias that can result from societal forces by employing a technique whereby an anonymous collection of opinions is used, supplemented by feedback loops that can be used to influence outcomes.

Description: This article provides a brief introduction to forecasting methods that are potentially relevant to actuarial work.

Description: Introduction of the new Forecasting and Futurism Section – helps members stay current, and facilitates professional development by providing information about and training in forecasting and futurism methods and tools.

Description: Welcome to our Genetic Algorithm shell for Excel.