I'm trying to pick up some 2nd hand books on financial mathematics. There's a few listed at the start of the CT1 core notes but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations......
Hello Scatboy, I have borrowed from the library "The theory of interest" (Kellison, S. G. 2nd ed. Irwin, 1991. 446 pages. ISBN: 0256091501) and I think it is a very good book. The material is explained in details and there are plenty of exercises and examples. It is however rather academic and feels at times a little cold and abstract. I'm still considering buying one of the suggested books, and would like to know if any other has read for instance "An introduction to the mathematics of finance" (McCutcheon, J. J.; Scott, W. F. Heinemann, 1986. 463 pages. ISBN: 043491228X). Cheers Marco
An introduction to the mathematics of finance Hi Marco, I bought and read "An introduction to the mathematics of finance" when I was doing CT1. Although it was quite a hard read (CT1 was my first actuarial exam), I think that it was really helpful.
Hiya, To be honest, I would just go off the core reading and the Acted notes, they are really good. Most of all the best way to pass this exam (in my opinion) is to group together all past exam questions on a particular topic, and just do them all (rather than doing past exams all in one go) you get used to the method for a question this way. Most questions use a very similar method This was advice given to me on a revision day (John Lee) and it worked well for me! Good luck
The use of books other than the Core Reading Hello Monkey_Mike, I don't deny the value of the core reading but in my opinion this is just the... core of the subject. Reading a book while at the same time studying the ActEd material helped me to make those key connections which otherwise would have taken me days to grasp. This is what I'm looking in a book, some good "general reasoning" explanation and maybe a few non-trivial examples taken from the real world. I'm afraid "The theory of interest" doesn't totally meet these basic needs, in that quite often the maths is left to do the talking and the examples are a bit abstract. Hence, my general question about other books. Having said that, your advice about grouping all past exam questions by topic is definitely good and worth following. I suggest the revision notes from ActEd, as I'm using them and they really help. Cheers Marco LG
