Introduction In analyzing the growth trajectories of the Coronavirus, a key question is whether the US and other countries are going to follow the explosion of cases and deaths in Italy or are going to level out, as is being experienced in China and South Korea. My view is that in an exponential growth scenario …
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS: Princess Diamond Corona Virus Risk Analysis Introduction This report is a preliminary analysis of the risk of infection (symptomatic and asymptomatic) and death (fatality rate or FR) from the corona virus. The analysis is based on the data derived from the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship which experienced an outbreak of the virus …
Introduction This is a second article in the series of Probabilistic Programming for Actuarial Science. The first article introduced the Bayesian approach to inferring risk rates and predicting future claims in an actuarial context and built a practical model in Greta, a probabilistic programming language, to conduct the analysis. In a beta binomial model, a …
II. Probabilistic Programming: Survival Analysis Read More »
Introduction A core task of actuarial analysis is estimation of risk rates for insured events. This includes analyses such as estimating mortality rates, lapse rates, incidence rates, termination rates and so on. In addition to determining best estimates for risk rates, understanding the uncertainty around the best estimates is a critical component of the overall …
I. Probabilistic Programming for Actuarial Science Read More »
The CDC has just published its new set of reports analyzing the trends in mortality and life expectancy from 2016 to 2017. Unfortunately, there has been a decline in overall life expectancies in the US. Sources of mortality that have shown statistically significant increases in mortality are (from highest to lowest impact): Uninentional Injuries Influenza …
Life Expectancies in the US Worsen (but with some bright spots) Read More »
Here are some interesting books that I have been reading and would recommend to others. Some of the books are general in nature and accessible to a wide audience, others can be quite technical. The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis (General): This is one of the best books that I have read in years. It is …
Final Review: A summary of the final results can be found here. Original article: 7/22/2016: Being in the height of the presidential election season, there is intense interest as to who is likely to win the November elections. The standard approach in the press has been to commission a poll, report the results and compare …
Howard Zail, partner at Elucidor, will be presenting ideas on predictive analytics in long-term care at the 2012 Society of Actuaries (SOA) annual conference. He will present on Tuesday, October 16 in “Session 112: Hot Topics in Long Term Care Insurance.” Howard will describe how advances in predictive analytics can be applied in an insurance environment …
The Turing Award, which is the computer science equivalent of the Nobel Prize, was awarded to Judea Pearl. Pearl was honored for his contributions to artificial intelligence. He championed a probabilistic way of creating smart computer systems rather than building a set of rules. These systems are encapsulated in Bayesian Networks. Bayesian analysis forms a …
Turing Award goes to Bayesian Network Specialist Read More »
In 1994, I formed Lotter Actuarial Partners, Inc., an actuarial consulting firm specializing in buy-side insurance company appraisals, mortality science and critical illness product design and underwriting. Over the ensuing years, Lotter Actuarial Partners was fortunate to attract talented and creative actuaries, systems analysts, programmers, medical doctors, underwriters and other professionals who brought additional expertise …
