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Actuary- maths not used?

S

scarlets

Member
They sell Actuary as a career where you can use your maths.

But in reality, apart from in academia, Actuaries don't do anything seriously mathematical.

The early exams give the impression that mathematical knowledge is required and that one day it will be of use, but in most cases it's not. After the CT series the knowledge is long forgotten.

Therefore shouldn't they be more truthful with people about the lack of maths? Reality is that Actuaries spend their vast amount of time in front of spreadsheets or studying intensely dull documents, doing number crunching work that does not require degree level maths at all.

Some have speculated that the early exams are there to reel in math grads mainly.

But even those exams are a strange Darwinian exercise where they get people to perform way too many laborious calcs with a calculator, usually with no time for checking one's answers and struggle to finish the paper! That does not prove mathematical ability at all.
 
Its a harsh assessment. You can work for example with actuarial software and so may be designing models etc from scratch. True not many do, but you have to be able to understand what lies behind black boxes these days.

So i do think you need a good mathematical hat on but if you want to use it all the time, then yes other paths do more of that.
 
I think you can make the same argument about engineering or any other technical discipline.
However I do think every now and again 'shifts' come along, when a sound understanding of the fundamentals is required. (e.g. significant regulatory changes, innovative new products etc.)
 
Maybe if you work in something boring such as pensions/life but in most other areas uni level stats is used on a daily basis
 
If all you are doing is churning out quotes in pre-defined templates, then of course there's little maths involved. Other professions are exactly the same. There's a good reason for that, which is that people tend to get maths wrong and so pre-packaging and testing calculations is a good idea.

If you really want some mathematical fun, go and get involved in GI pricing or something.
 
scarlets said:
Do tell more...
Click to expand...

In my one year and three months of employment with my current co, I've worked/I'm working on:
1) Pricing& value at risk model for securitization deals
2) Sparse data multiple decrement model for loan portfolios based on full likelihood equations
3) Supply chain container optimization strategy
4) Capital expenditure forecasting method based on auto-evolving parameters.

All math intensive. The only non-math work I do is run a standardized report one day a month. This is in an in-house analytics division of a manufacturing company (which has a fully owned financial subsidiary).
 
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Oxy - sounds like there's more maths there than some do in their entire careers. But I think you're the exception more than the rule.
 
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