Modelling Life

CBC News - Canada - Was David Li the guy who 'blew up Wall Street?'

Have you ever thought about the first person who ever call themselves an ‘actuary’? I imagine this person waking up one morning and thinking “Oh, I want to become the first actuary!” This person must have been very smart just to come up with this idea. The next day, someone asked them “What do you do in life?” And they replied “I’m an actuary, I tell people what’s the chance they’re going to die this year.” Well, that’s what Edward Rowe Mores did in 1762, when he decided, as the leader of what would become Equitable Life, that he should be called ‘actuary’. This is the first recorded time that the word referred to a role in business. I’ve looked up Edward Rowe More and what was the most fascinating thing to me is that he wrote a lot of papers in Latin. I suppose Latin was the Lingua Franca in the scientific community of that time. But still, it amazes me. I did 2 years of Latin, and my mastery of Latin doesn’t allow me to read more than the line “Cogito ergo sum”. What is also fascin...

Does someone listen to me? Does someone care? I may not surprise you if I say that over the years, I haven’t found a lot of people who actually care about what I do as an actuary. People still say things like “You work in IT, right?” after years of telling them I work as an actuary. Would you find it frustrating if people kept believing you’re doing something but you’re not? Would you find it frustrating if people said you were an accountant after telling them a million times you are an actuary? Life as an actuary can be frustrating. You develop great insurance products, and nobody comes to say thank you for the great annuity they’re going to get in 20 years' time. Life as an actuary can be unrewarding. Let’s be realistic, is there someone out there who cares about my actuarial contribution to the world? Last week, I went to visit my sister, and I had this immense opportunity to have an actuarial conversation with my nephew. He’s 15 years old and he’s contemplating a career as ...