September 2019 exam discussion

How did you find the paper ?
Given that the April 2019 pass mark was 55 , what do you think the pass mark will be ?
How would you rate your chances of passing, from definitely passed to definitely failed

 

Hi everyone, I experienced a technical glitch during my CM1b, in which I couldn't make my upload. I'm confident of my work in the CM1a, what are my chances of making the pass list,given my no-show performance in the practical test?

 

I’m surprised that emailing your script to the examination team didn’t occur to you.

 

Wait, I thought under such circumstances, you were supposed to complete the exam as normal and not edit the file past the 1h45min that is your actual exam time. Then you make a call to the Exam team as given in the instructions (may be expensive, but there again so are the exams themselves) where they may then grant you permission to email your script. You could email directly in the April 2019 sitting but for whatever reason, not in the September 2019 sitting.

Unfortunately, you need to score at least 1 mark in paper B in order to get a pass, even if paper A is flawless. A non-submission for paper B, if I'm not mistaken, makes your overall grade "absent". Aaargh.

 

I think the pass mark will decrease. The time series question in paper a had a mistake and part (v) was so ambiguous and this may lead to a poor comment in part (iv).
The reason why I am saying this is because:

The time series model given in the question had "a" as the coefficient of y(t-1) however the question ask for an estimate of alpha which was nowhere to be seen in the question

In part (v) they wanted the estimates of alpha and sigma^(2) using the yule walker equations. This is not bad at all but I think most people will leave their answer in terms of the autocovariance function at time zero and and time 1. Forgetting the fact that these can be estimated using the SAMPLE AUTOCOVARIANCE FUNCTION GIVEN ON PAGE 40 OF THE TABLEs. I won't blame anyone who will do this since the question did not talk about the sample autocovariance/observed autocovariance being given in the model.
This will of course lead to a very poor comment in part (iv).
And I don't think they will accept this poor wording of the question.

 

Hello! What happens if I edited the file for the CS2b examination for the last time two minutes after the time limit? Will I be penalized with marks or I risk getting zero marks for the whole paper? I add that I uploded my file to the platform without any issue.

 

The online exam guidance and behaviours document at https://www.actuaries.org.uk/documents/exam-guidance-and-behaviours-online-examinations states:

'It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure that all required files are submitted within the stated timelines. Candidates will have 15 minutes allocated to upload their exam documents onto the platform. Late submissions and documents found to be modified outside the examination time will be investigated and may not be marked. '

 

Given the level of difficulty for the sep 2019 exam, i am surprised that they actually increased the passing mark to 58 this time round.

 

And a 36% pass rate too. Seems harsh. I didn't actually think the exam was that bad but maybe I completely missed the mark on it. Will be interesting to see the examiner's report.