Description: Ruminations on changing skill sets and professions, with a focus on actuaries and data scientists

Description: Matrix decomposition techniques are used to find main features of a dataset. These features can be used to describe the data or to find clusters of objects. The decompositions have problems when the matrices have missing data or are from different exposures. This article examines the issue and some papers dealing with it.

Description: The presenters will cover the latest research undertaken by the Individual Life Experience Committee (ILEC). With several years of very robust individual life insurance experience data accumulated through the mandatory Statistical Agent data calls, this vast amount of data allows for various deeper dives into specific segments of business, such as large face amount, older age or juvenile. Speakers will cover studies the committee is currently involved in, future planned efforts, and results from a variety of sub-segments of business. Attendees will learn about emerging statistical techniques in scrubbing data, more refined quintile-grouped data segments, and interesting ways of conceptualizing how A/E results have changed from year to year. There will be something for everyone!

Description: Full version of International Section News, November 2006, Issue 40.