Teaching creativity through actuarial projects S t efanos Orfanos - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Teaching creativity through actuarial projects

S t efanos Orfanos DePaul Universit y 2019 Act uarial Teaching Conference

Who needs creativity?

Academic exercises:

• Focus on speed
• Apply a given method
• Emphasize the final answer

Real-life questions:

• Have many acceptable

answers

• Require assumptions or

interpretation, and dealing with ambiguity

• Take time

How to teach creativity?

Math-heavy programs:

• Go over proofs of results
• Have students come up with

their own proofs Actuarial programs:

• Assign proj ects that go

beyond the theory

• Introduce ambiguity
• Impose realistic constraints
• n time and data

Examples

Fit distributions to data. S tart with made-up data, then real

loss data, and then big data. Be aware of the principle of parsimony.

Work with data from various lines of business, e.g. personal or commercial auto, workers comp, medical malpractice, product liability, flood insurance, marine insurance… Apply misspecificat ion t est s and informat ion crit eria to formally evaluate the model fit. Consider the credibilit y of company loss data. Adj ust for spat ial or t emporal correlation.

Develop and t rend loss data.

Suggestions

Do: Provide guidance if students are confused Encourage experimentation and resourcefulness Reward continuous improvement Require clearly stated assumptions and sanity checks Don’ t: Prescribe what the answer should look like

Communicating creativity

Primary concerns:

• S

pelling, grammar, syntax

• Writing to be read

Last but not least:

• S

tructure

• Use of evocative graphs

and visualizations

• Recommendation