The Actuarial Revelation

When I was brushing my teeth morning, looking at my reflection in the mirror, I finally paid attention to the design of the t-shirt I was wearing. I remembered I ordered this t-shirt from the actuarial club when I was a sophomore. Since it was too big for me, I always tried to avoid wearing it.

Finally I realised the D.A.S.S. letters are four actuarial symbols. (As you can see from the toothpaste stint on the left hand side, you can imagine my jaw was dropped when I had the actuarial revelation. :))

nDx - I don't think I learned about this big nDx in Course M. I used ndx more often.

ndx is the number of people die between age x and age x+n.

a double dot x- This is the annuity that pays a unit amount at the beginning of each year that the annuitant at age x survives.

s double dot- an actuarial accumulated value at the end of a life annuity-due of 1 per year, payable while (x) survives.

Actually these symbols came a long way.My professor used to tell us that- once upon a time, some actuaries decided to develop some symbols in order to have a "common language" for actuaries from all over the world to communicate the actuarial concepts.