I’ve replaced the old, handwritten solutions to the practice problems from section A with typed solutions. The old handwritten solutions were essentially screenshots of the videos, while the typed solutions can also include extra description that isn’t written in the video. They are also much easier for you to print and easier for me to correct, so ultimately I will be replacing all of the practice problem solutions with the typed solutions.
As these are essentially new solutions, they probably have some typos that I don’t know about. Please let me know about any errors you find so I can update them.
dave Uncategorized
There haven’t been any syllabus changes for the Spring 2010 sitting, so most of the seminar content is remaining unchanged. The biggest change that I am going to make is that currently all of the practice problems have both a video solution and a handwritten solution that is effectively a screen capture of the video, and I am going to replace the handwritten solutions with typed solutions that are easier for you to print and easier for me to update. The typed solutions for section A should be up by the end of the first week of January, with the other parts to follow after that.
There are also a few lessons from sections C and D that will be updated, some to take advantage of the new distribution tables, some to incorporate the MultiView calculator a little bit better. That should be done by the end of January, which is before you will need those lessons.
I will be out of town for Christmas until the 27th, so none of these updates will happen before I get back.
dave Uncategorized
Even though the exam window starts next week, I am still trying to add a couple final things. The SOA has now published samples of what the exam tables will look like at http://www.beanactuary.com/exams/C4_Tables_Oct2009.pdf and you should take a look at the screenshots to get a feeling for that. After you are at your computer, you will probably be given a brief demo time to familiarize yourself with the tables (in particular, you should probably experiment with the “Find” feature on the continuous distributions), but in the meantime I have also posted a .zip file with the exam tables broken into 5 sections that correspond with the screen shots in the Practice Exams section.
I also just posted another sample exam. Video solutions should be up later today (Thursday).
Finally, since this last practice exam is so soon before the exam, I will be holding online office hours both Sunday at 9pm ET and Monday from 12:30 to 2 pm ET. I don’t have anything planned for this–what will happen is I will share my computer screen using webinar software and answer questions. We have a relatively limited number of connections that our software can use, so if you are interested please e-mail me for login information. If you want to attend, it also saves time if you can send me some of your questions ahead of time. That certainly isn’t necessary, and in fact some people who have attended in the past have had no questions at all and just wanted to listen, which is also fine.
dave Uncategorized
I’ve started a review section of the seminar, which currently has a draft formula sheet and 30 review problems. I currently am working on solutions for a collection of 208 review problems that have different topics mixed together so that they really force you to review, and will be posting them as the solutions get done. (Even though many of these are old exam problems, I am waiting for the solutions to post them since doing the solutions helps me find defective problems.) I expect that I will update the formula sheet after testing it in action at the live seminar that is at the end of September, and I will add some review lessons around that time as well.
With the CBT version of the exam, you will be forced to use a popup window for the distribution formulas rather than having a written copy. Sometime between now and the exam, you should get used to using the distribution formulas in that way. My recommendation for the review problems is to work at a computer, using the 1 problem per page PDF version of the review problems and a PDF copy of the distribution formulas–that way, you will get more used to something that is closer to the test environment than doing everything on paper.
dave Uncategorized
A quick note before I disappear for the weekend–as of now (end of July), I’ve finished updating the lessons and problem sets for the syllabus changes. I’ve recorded the new solutions, but not yet finished producing the videos so the solutions to some of the new problems (e.g., end of D.2 and all of E.2) aren’t yet up.
Further additions before the exam will consist of a collection of review videos, meaning roughly 1 per larger section (so 5 or 6 total). The formula sheet also needs to be updated for the syllabus changes. I’ve mostly finished a draft of the new version, so that should be up next week, but I will ultimately make some changes after the live seminar in late September once I see how useful the formula sheet is for me. There will also be a largish collection of review problems that will mix the different topics up. The current draft has 175 of those, but there are a few topics I need to add and so my guess is that it will be closer to 200. These are different from the practice exams in that many of these questions are old exam questions that you may have seen elsewhere and the practice exams are original questions (albeit often patterned after recent exam questions).
dave Uncategorized
I guess I forgot to make last week’s update post. I re-recorded part of the (a,b,1) lesson (A.3.3) and added more (a,b,1) practice problems. The new approach that I am taking to (a,b,1) distributions is faster for solving exam style problems. That change is somewhat older.
I’ve done some more restructuring of the seminar: what was E.2 (stock simulation) has all been removed from the syllabus, even the parts that were also in the Loss Models text, so I have removed that section. It seemed silly for E and F to only have one subsection, so I have moved the risk section from F.2 to E.2. The notation and terminology for risk measures is different in the Loss Models text than the old Hardy study note, and the material is being reduced, so those lessons will need to be re-recorded. That should happen at some point next week.
dave new files
I’ve added a lesson on normal and lognormal distributions to Section A.2, as well as some practice problems. A couple of the new practice problems are about mixed distributions and are based on an idea that came up on the Spring 2009 exam, but most are about the new lesson.
As we get ready for the November sitting, I will be making a weekly blog post about what has been added recently in terms of updated lessons or (more commonly) more practice problems. Typically that will be at the end of the week, meaning that the next such announcement will be next Friday.
dave Uncategorized
There are going to be a number of changes to Exam 4/C beginning with the Fall 2009 sitting. The most obvious one is that the exam is changing from a 40 question, 4 hour paper and pencil exam to a 35 question, 3 1/2 hour CBT exam. This also means that the syllabus is changing, mostly for the shorter. The syllabus changes are as follows:
- Everything from Derivatives Markets is being moved to exam 3F/MFE
- The Cox model and general linear models are being removed from the syllabus
- Ruin theory is being removed from the syllabus
- The Risk Measures text is changing from the Hardy study note to the 3rd edition of Loss Models. This means that the terminology is changing slightly and some of the material is being removed
- The 2nd edition of Loss Models is no longer an acceptable reference for the exam (which is good because the 3rd edition is better)
- A learning objective applying (a,b,1) models has been specifically added to the syllabus. This is something that was implicitly on the syllabus before, but I guess will mean that (a,b,1) models will be emphasized more on the actual exam.
To address these changes, I am removing what was section C.4 (moving the old C.5 up), F.1, F.3, and much of E.2. That is a total of about 8 lessons that are being removed. I am going to add 2 lessons that go into normal and lognormal distributions (and conjugate priors) more deeply than before since they were tested so heavily this spring. I will also add a section of review lessons, and rerecord the risk measures lessons (what was F.2, and will be F.1) plus the lesson on (a,b,1) distributions. Most of these changes are in the second half of the seminar, so they should be completed well before you get to them.
I will also be adding some more practice problems and practice exams. The new problems will be indicated on the answer sheet by being in a different color than the old problems.
dave Admin, new files
I have to leave town tomorrow for a family emergency and am therefore cancelling my Saturday office hours. I will be back either Monday or Tuesday during the day, so I expect that I will still have office hours on Tuesday.
dave Announcements
Since May 14th is rapidly approaching, I am going to start holding online office hours. We are starting to experiment with ways to do this, and the webconferencing software that I will be using is limited to relatively small groups of people. As a result, if you want to attend one of the office hours session, please send me e-mail and I can give you the login information. Everything will run through a Java applet on your web browser, so you may need to install a Java plugin first (I had to do so in Chrome, but not in my other browsers).
My office hour times will be: Wednesday, 5/6 from 3-4 pm EDT, Saturday 5/9 from noon-1pm EDT and from 8-9 pm EDT, and Tuesday 5/12 from 10-11 pm EDT. (Note: the Saturday office hours have been cancelled–see the newer post). I will try to record the office hour sessions for those who can’t make any of those times, but I haven’t figured out how well that will work (I think that the audio will only pick up me so questions won’t make it through).
I also wanted to give you a revised formula_sheet v2. There are 2 typos that are corrected from the earlier version: the definition of conditional probability had the wrong set in the denominator, and the second, more complicated formula for v-hat in the non-parametric credibility section was missing the subscript on X_i-bar.
dave Admin, Announcements, errata