Format & order of items in Audit trail (paper 1)

[Trevor]

Hi,

I have a question about the presentation of the audit trail for paper 1.
I remember reading somewhere that it is okay to write the audit trail in the Excel file itself, so not needing to upload another Word document.
However if we are doing it in the Excel file, our formatting wouldn't be as pretty as the ones in the model solution. For example, indentations, subscripts, etc.
To illustrate, this is how my audit trail looks like in all my practices:

I would use larger font sizes, with bold and underline for the main sections of the audit trail (Objective, Data, Assumption, Model), and for different tabs within the model, it will be only underline.
So all my audit trail contents are rewritten in pure text format (except headers)
For the formulas, I would write something like:
" rv[i,n] = -LN(U[i,n]) / lambda[n]
where [i,n] represents the ith card of the nth competitor. "

 

[Trevor]

For the order of points,

I have the belief that it has to be written exactly in the order of how I did it in the spreadsheet.
This makes me a little bit confused. We introduce the Data before talking about the Model.
It makes sense to talk about data validation and their corrections within the data section.
However, if we follow the rule about writing things exactly in the same order as the spreadsheet, I will talk about data validation and corrections and the correct tab.

So, the model solution may discuss about them under the data section.
But in my model, the first tab will be the "Params" tab, and then the "Data". In such case my data validation steps and corrections will not be mentioned until half-way through the Model section of my document.

Is this okay?

 

[ntickner]

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here. In both cases, you're providing the necessary information that someone reading the audit trail would need to be able to follow it through.

However, there is a readability point, and because this is an exam, it's a 'make life easy for the examiner' point.

1. Do the Audit trail in Word. It makes things easier for you (you can have both windows open next to each other and don't have to switch tabs to remember where or what you did, it's much easier to insert things at a later stage, easier to edit & format, etc). It makes it easier for the examiner, who looks at your submission through web-based marking software that renders word documents, but not excel. It's not wrong to do it in Excel - and you'll only lose maybe one mark if your formatting isn't great, but do you really want to annoy the person who's deciding your fate?

2. As above, the examiner has a section in the mark schedule covering data validation. If 90% of the submissions deal with describing the data, validating it and correcting it all in one place, and yours does something different, there's a more of a chance that they'll miss something in moving from one part of the schedule to another.

 

[Trevor]

Hi ntickner,

Thank you for the advice.RE:

1. I was always sticking within Excel because I am not sure how will it work if I want to upload two files into the exam platform, all the previous exams I took required only 1 word file. I think I will know it when the exam platform testing opens.
I suppose even in Word, I am not expected to properly use the "Equations" feature to write formulas right? Can I write it just like how I did in Excel? (ie: subscripts written in the square brackets [i,n]
Alternatively, I remember reading somewhere saying it is okay to even get a screen-shot of the formula from the question paper. Am I right to assume that including an image within my word document will not mess things up when it gets uploaded?

2. Alright. In that case I will still do proper sign posting of the cell references & tabs in the "Data" section.
However when explaining what has been done in the data tab of my model, I will just redirect the examiner back to the "Data" section. Eg:
Data tab:
Cells AA1 to AC10 of performs validation check as described in the "Data validation" section of this document.
Cells AX1 to AZ10 contains the corrected data, as described in the "Data correction" section of this document.

I am really finding ways to write the document nicely without spending too much time.

 

[ntickner]

Apologies for not answering all your points - bit of a rush yesterday...

You can certainly upload more than one file - out of the 1000+ candidates each session, less than 10 will put the audit trail in the Excel.
And you definitely don't need to use the Equation editor. using quasi actuarial notation as you've suggested would be absolutely fine. Just make sure that you use it consistently throughout.

Spending time finding ways to speed things up is a good use of time. Especially in Paper 1 - it usually is a bit of a rush, and you don't want to spend ages doing things that don't get you many marks, and restrict your ability to put your best efforts into the things that do.