Numbers matter and....

I got this sticker from a new met friend. Yup, it's a bit cheesy, but I like the word play and it's humorous!

Accounting Improv

I saw this on the current issue of The New Yorker (Feb 11 & 18, 2008, p.65).

Can we have an Actuarial Evening at the Improv?

"Now is the part of the show when we ask the audience to shout out some random mortality tables and probability distributions."

When is the best time to hire?

WSJ selected 15 Top Small Workplaces this year and one of them is an actuarial and human resource consulting firm in Pittsburgh. The judge of this contest commented their "people first" mentality and the freedom to try new things within the company.

Browsing the website of this company, I couldn't find a link to their career session. I thought I must have missed it. I asked another friend to look at the site. Same thing. She couldn't find the career or job session neither.

Hey, isn't it the best time for this firm to hire is now? Who doesn't want to work at a great workplace? For sure, this WSJ report will generate some attention to the companies on the list. When there are more prospective candidates are looking at your website, what's the next thing you are going to do? How do you turn eyeballs into inquiries or submission of resumes?

Perhaps they do have a link to their job session, somewhere in the website. If you can find it, please let me know.

Here's a website of another actuarial consulting firm. How long does it take you to find the word "career"on the screen? (Hint: focus on the upper right-hand corner.)

Studying Actuarial Science in Singapore

A reader asked me if I knew anything about the Actuarial field in Singapore.

Actually I don't know much about it. I only knew that a boyfriend of my dorm mate from JC was studying Actuarial Science in NTU when I talked to my dorm mate last year.

Last night, I had dinner with a friend from Singapore. Being curious about the actuarial profession in Singapore, I asked my friend if he knew anything about it.

And this is what he said, "I knew nothing about it. Before I met you, I didn't even know this profession exists!"

Do you know anything about studying actuarial science in Singapore? Please leave a comment to share. Thank you. :)

P.S. I found this pdf file from the Singapore Actuarial Society. Actually, NTU and NUS do offer Actuarial Science programs.

Fishy Actuarial Recruiter

Once in a while, I received emails from actuarial recruiters asking if I'm looking for job opportunities. Here's the one I received two weeks ago:

Hi Y:

Are you looking to start your career in the actuarial field or take the next step up the ladder?

Is there anything missing from your current position or would you prefer to be in a different geographic location?

My name is XXXXX, an actuarial recruiter. I help actuaries of all levels find employment and/or make changes within the actuarial field. With over X years of experience working with companies and applicants across all lines of business on a national basis.

It’s your career, what can I do to help move it forward?

Just click reply so we can get the ball rolling. Or call me toll free at 866/XXX-XXXX

Thanks

XXXXX

XXX recruiting firm

Being an intellectual curious person, I looked up this recruiter and the recruiting firm online. Guess what, they don't even have a website! Nowadays, if a company doesn't have a website, I wonder if they ever exist. Sadly, this email looks like a spam to me. It's hard to believe that there's spam targeted to the actuarial community.

It's a nightmare to an independent recruiter if the emails sent out were perceived as spam to the potential job candidates.

What does it take to be an ASA

Loli was amazed that people in the actuarial profession have to keep studying and taking exams after college. Most of my friends don't really understand the process of getting the qualification. So let me make a checklist here:

What does it take to be an ASA (Associate of the Society of Actuaries):

1. Pre-requisite: Calculus, Linear Algebra, Business Law 101, Intro to Accounting and Math Statistics. (Most people have taken these classes in college. The SOA exams don't test you on these things directly, but it's good to have some background knowledge.) (Check!)

2. Preliminary Exams - P, FM, MLC, MFE, C (Check!)

3. 3 VEE (Validation by Educational Experience in Applied Statistical Methods, Corporate Finance, and Economics.) - In order to get the credit in college, you need to get a 'B' or above in those particular classes. (Check!)

4. 8 FAP Modules (Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice) - (Studying in Progress)

5. FAP Exam 1 (testing material from FAP Modules 1-5) -(Going to take it on 12/12/2007)

6. FAP Final Assessments (testing material from FAP Modules 6-8)- (Early next year , hopefully)

7. Associateship Professionalism Course (APC) -(Early next year, hopefully)

It sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Probably everything that's worth doing, it takes hard work. And you don't just find a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, you do find some gold coins along the way too. (i.e. pay raise for passing the exams) :)

A Story for Actuaries

Lucky Tom was on his way to work and picking up coins along the way when he ran into a very hungry tyrannosaur. Because Lucky Tom was not a scientist, he was safe from becoming the tyrannosaur's lunch. He continues on his way when he stumbled across an urn that contained six blue balls and four red balls.

While pondering the hypergeometric probabilities, Lucky Tom ran into a group of men. 30% of them had a circulation problem. They informed him that 2/3 of men who have a circulation problem are smokers while 1/14 of men without problems smoke. After using Bayes' Theorem to determine that 4/5 of smokers have a circulation problem, he wandered on.

Lucky Tom walked a little farther and ran into a bank employee who asked if he would be interested in buying an increasing annuity valued at spot rates derived from US Treasury bonds. After calculating the risk and IRR, Lucky Tom declined and continued looking for coins. The bank employee was persistent and followed Lucky Tom and said that he could take out a loan and repay it using the sinking fund method.

Lucky Tom considered this, since he could deposit the coins he was finding at Poisson rate of 1/2 per minute into the sinking fund. However, he declined. "What a strange day today!" thought Lucky Tom, "First a hungry tyrannosaur, then the urn, then the group of men with a circulation problem, what next?" Suddenly, Lucky Tom was distracted by a shiny quarter on the ground. As he bent down to pick it up, he was gobbled up by the hungry tyrannosaur who had now realized that Lucky Tom was indeed a scientist, an actuarial scientist.

THE END

(Note a: I didn't write this story. I found this story at the back of a t-shirt that I ordered from Drake Actuarial Student Society 2 or 3 years ago. I thought someone who served as the exec committee wrote this.)

(Note b : If you have not taken the Exam M, you may not understand why Lucky Tom, the scientist, the tyrannosaur are so significant in the story. These characters appeared a lot in the exam questions. The story is more or less an inside joke for the exam-takers. :))

Actuaries: an offshorable occupation?

During my Easter dinner, my friends and I were talking about why an actuary's billing rate was so high. We were joking about opening a shop in China and bid the valuation project for less than half of what it is charged right now. Who knows, what a coincidence, I just found this WSJ article on March 28 at SmartLemming. (It's not breaking news anymore, since it's been more than a week old.)

If you look at the list, you can see that actuaries are one of the most highly vulnerable occupation to be off shored. (Indeed, I know it is happening right now. But then again, when you interview for an first actuarial job, the companies won't tell you about it.) So what makes actuaries became offshorable? I don't have a concrete answer right now. However, from the article, Blinder offered a good starting point to ponder.

He said, "the most important divide is not, as commonly argued, between jobs that require a lot of education and those that don't. It's not simply that skilled jobs stay in the US and lesser-skilled jobs go to India or China. The important distinction is between services that must be done in the U.S."

He also had a good point on education. He said, "It isn't how many years one spends in school that will matter, it's choosing to learn the skills for jobs that cannot easily be delivered electronically from afar."

Also check out Lori's post- she had some really good suggestions on dealing with the "worst case scenario".

So you think Actuary is HOT?

I saw this link from Actuary.net two days ago. Hm..interesting. Some people out there really want to date an actuary?! (Please, don't tell me this is a joke.;))I heard often that my girl pals want to date a doctor, an architect, an artist...This is my first time hearing people think actuaries are hot. (On behalf of all of my actuarial friends, to whoever wrote this on craigslist, kudos to you!)

Though this post has been up on craigslist since September, if you are interested, it's still worth a try. Who knows you may find your perfect someone? ;)

However, before you hit the reply button, read the fine prints first: "No jokes about figuring the probability that we will actually end up together. That's too nerdy." So, don't tell any of these actuarial jokes on the first date. (Maybe you can save it for the 2nd or 3rd one, if you are really running out of things to say...)

For this reason, I won't be using the probability models I learned from Exam M to speculate the chances of success here. Good Luck!