Years ago I worked for the Group Actuarial unit at CIGNA. Actuaries are the people that determine rates and risk. They’re big players in insurance, and becoming a full actuary instantly makes you an officer of the company at most places. Needless to say, I am not an actuary; I supported their efforts with my systems skills. I got to speaking about actuaries with an IRC chum today. If you want to know what distinguishes actuaries from statisticians in my mind, read on …
Actuaries use statistics. Actuaries need to be good statisticians. But there’s a “real world” aspect to actuarial science. It looks something like this:
ai: I wanted to be an actuary for a while.
ai: I really like statistics a lot.
strex[a] considers what he should do to be “productive” with the rest of the day
ai strex[a]: I strongly recommmend masturbation.
mneptok: and statistics.
mneptok: “4 out of 5 cumshots missed my eye”
mneptok: “7 of 10 were not blanks.”
mneptok: now
mneptok: this is where we separate statistics from actuarial work
mneptok: statistics would say that if 1 of 5 cumshots hit the eye, and 3 of 10 were blanks, that statistically eventually you would get a blank that hit you in the eye.
mneptok: actuaries know better.