
2015 Events
The Joys of Disagreeing - Culture, Uncertainty and Modelling
Presented by Dr. Andreas Tsanakas
17th November 2015
Andreas provided a guided tour of different rationalities, drawing heavily from his co-authored paper “Model Risk – Daring to open up the black box” which recently won the prestigious Peter Clark prize for best paper from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
Should cycling helmets be compulsory? What must we do about climate change? How should insurers use their internal models?
All these questions are about responding to uncertainty – and each can be answered in multiple ways. We can disagree and still be rational. The ways we perceive and respond to uncertainty are part and parcel of the different ways we choose to live our lives and our competing ideas about how society should be organised.
The talk introduced the audience to Cultural Theory, a body of work developed originally in anthropology and political science, and more recently applied to the study of Model Risk in insurance.
Things I Wish I Knew at 30 - An Actuary's Lessons from the Witness Box
Presented by Ronnie Bowie
Sponsored by The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries
16th September 2015
Drawing on 35 years of experience including several trips to Court (as an expert!), Ronnie Bowie picks out his most important career learnings and explains why knowledge of these learnings would have helped him become a better actuary more quickly. He uses examples (but with the names withheld to protect the innocent, the guilty, the naïve, the foolish and the unlucky).
Watch the video of the event (please see note for CPD verification purposes)
Read an article about the event
Tweet, share, post! Insights into viral marketing
Presented by Dr. Caroline Wiertz
4th June 2015
Word of mouth has long been recognised as the “Holy Grail” of marketing, as it is getting harder and harder to reach consumers with traditional advertising. In this interactive talk, Caroline gave a short overview of what we know about these word-of-mouth processes and shared the results of recent research studying what online content gets shared, how Twitter messages affect the adoption of new products, and if social media trendsetters can be targeted by native advertising.
Panel Discussion: A Survival Guide to being an Actuarial Student
Sponsored by The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries
12th March 2015
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In this interactive panel discussion, a panel of newly-qualified actuaries of the UK actuarial profession and a panel of employers from each of the main actuarial fields gave some practical tips on:
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How to maintain a healthy work/life/study balance
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Effective studying while working
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How to be a good worker – from top student to top employee