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computer skill required

D

deepakraomore

Member
What computer skill required for actuarial job? Basic as well advance
(Which languages and software)
 
It depends what company you want to work for, but in most cases you don't need much expertise in computing.

In my company, most people just use the Microsoft Office package (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). If you are able to code in VBA then that's helpful but not essential. I'd say 90% of my work is done on Excel.

For the more intense modelling, the company uses a program called MoSes, which I believe is programmed using a variant of C++. However, the company actually hires expert programmers to set these models up. The actuaries specify the model and what they want it to do, and the programmers build it, so even in this case you wouldn't need to know how to program in this way.
 
It varies a *lot* by workplace and job function, but generally speaking most actuaries don't do vast amounts of pure programming. I wouldn't recommend learning specific packages or systems in great depth, because that's of little value unless the place happens to actually use it.

Knowing Excel inside out and upside down is useful, as is a working knowledge of VBA, but you'll pick up most of it on the job.

My advice would be to work through an introductory computer science course that covers data and algorithms - that will give you the ability to handle anything that gets thrown at you. Something like these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Python-Programming-Introduction-Computer-Science/dp/1887902996
https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101

If you want something a bit more hardcore,

http://www.stroustrup.com/Programming/

is excellent, but strong meat.
 
I would add in a data manipulation software like Access, Foxpro, SQL ‘cause very often we have to perform data massaging for valuation reporting or experience studies.

Sure it can be done in Excel using Pivot Tables and all, but for data entries of a few million?
 
Knowledge of Basic SAS will always be helpful (especially for data manipulation and also for presentation)....
Employers generally ask for exposure to SAS at the basic level of work(esp. in India).
 
For those who don't want to drop a couple of grand on a SAS license, R is a pretty popular option.
 
Hobbs said:
For those who don't want to drop a couple of grand on a SAS license, R is a pretty popular option.
Click to expand...

R is quite good, but some large corporations (like mine) have a total aversion to anything that's a freeware. I've been fighting (in vain) to get R installed in my PC for the last year and a half.
 
Oh yes. If it's right to install R this year, then maybe it was a mistake to have SAS last year.
That's a whole can of worms noone wants to go near.
 
Hobbs said:
Lots of stuff will (with a little work) actually run just fine from a folder on your desktop. No need to involve those fussy configuration guys at all.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rportable/
Click to expand...

Thanks Hobbs.

You underestimate the pricky nature of multi-national IT audits! I can have R-portable in my work PC - but can't write any codes in it (for work) because it's not created by an "authorized" software :(

SAS IML is a really good (actually, it's quite a bad) alternative to R and MATLAB. I use that and PROC SQL almost all the time to base SAS, whose programming language was created and patented by Fred Flintstone of the stone age.
 
Last edited:
Oxymoron said:
You underestimate the pricky nature of multi-national IT audits! I can have R-portable in my work PC - but can't write any codes in it (for work) because it's not created by an "authorized" software :(
Click to expand...
Yus... well this is a different problem isn't it.
 
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