COVID-19 is wrecking a lot of things. Cover story author Annmarie Geddes Baribeau gave us the big picture in “Gamechanger” from AR May-June 2020, and now she gets more product-specific. She describes how COVID-19 is affecting an already hard market for commercial structures and associated liabilities.
In his “President’s Message,” Steve Armstrong notes that a majority of CAS candidates are coming from North American universities that have formal actuarial science degrees. This is a good thing, right? Armstrong wonders if the CAS is narrowing its educational focus at a time we are trying to broaden our market. I encourage you to weigh in and let him know your thoughts.
Now for some good news: The CAS won nine awards for exemplary work in 2019! This report is a fine reflection on the work of the CAS Staff and volunteers. Congratulations to all those involved!
In the midst of the pandemic, the China Association of Actuaries and the CAS safely conducted an actuarial bootcamp. Reported on by Ran Guo, CAS director of international relations, this type of program may usher in new kinds of learning processes.
Have you ever wondered how data mining works? Jim Lynch’s “Finding Insight in a ‘Bag of Words’” takes some of the mystery out of data mining text. Even if you don’t use the technique, being familiar with it might prove useful in the future.
I missed the latest CAS Research Paper on cyber exposures until I read about in this AR. “Reliability Quantifying Cyberrisk Exposure” encouraged me to read the paper. I hope you do the same.
Cape Cod might not be on your list of places to go, but “Revisiting Cape Cod” can be done from your armchair, with Glenn Myers as your Explorations column guide.
On a lighter side, Downtime column author Laurie McClellan profiles CAS Fellow Jerry Miccolis, who chronicles his involvement with a rag-tag group of senior softballers in his latest book, The Boys of Late Summer. I hope to have more Downtime profiles in upcoming issues. Drop us a line at ar@casact.org, if you have an idea for a story on how you or a member spends their time away from work.
That’s it for my notes — I am off to work on “It’s a Puzzlement.”
