Academics

  • In addition to our education system, the body of actuarial knowledge itself needs the nutrition that the academic world can supply.
    • Academics look at problems differently than those of us in the practical world, and that difference in perspective can supplement, in a healthy way, the growth and evolution of the basic subject.
    • In addition to the  diversification in approach, the academic world gives us a bridge to other fields of knowledge that can contribute to actuarial development.
    • The actuarial knowledge base cannot stand isolated from other academic subjects. 

1986 – SOA – Address of the President, by Richard S. Robertson, Society of Actuaries – 6p

  • 240 CHAPTER 28 • Dictionaries, Vocabulary, and Spelling FOR TEACHING: Finding Information in Dictionaries (28a)
    • Consider demonstrating the keen usefulness of the information in dictionaries by bringing in a couple of legal contracts – say, from life insurance companies.
      • Reading these contracts calls for a sharp eye and a very clear knowledge of what each word means.
      • Materials describing one such life insurance plan, for example, contain the following terms: semiannual, net cost, underwrite, waiver, conversion, incontestability, and incapacitated.
      • Ask students to define each of these words, without – and then with – the help of a dictionary.
      • Which words would they want to make sure they really understood before signing a contract?

2011 – Book – The St. Martin’s Handbook, Instructor’s Handbook – 7th Edition – 492p

  • 2008 – AP – The Inversion of Morals in Markets: Death, Benefits, and the Exchange of Life Insurance Policies, by Sarah Quinn, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Sociology – 47p
  • 2003 – AP – Maps of Bounded Rationality Psychology for Behavioral Economics, by Daniel Kahneman – 28p
  • 2018 – AP – Financial crises at insurance companies: learning from the demise of the National Surety Company during the Great Depression, by Jonathan D. Rose