Via Paul Krugman, I read the most polite putdown from an actuary I’ve seen for a while. In an op-ed in the NY Times, Gary King and Somar Soneji alleged that Social Security projections understate life expectancy and are therefore far too optimistic: We reached these conclusions, and presented them in an article inContinue Reading
Mortality has been improving in Australia (and indeed most of the world) for a long time. As my dad found out recently, the life expectancy at birth for a boy born in Australia has improved from 63 when he was born, to 79.7 years now. But there is considerable debateContinue Reading
This week there was an article in the NY Times (in the fashion and style section, but that’s another story) asking whether Dads are taking over on the home front. It was prompted by some census statistics that there are now 176,000 dads in the US who have left the workforceContinue Reading
With the controversial Stronger Futures laws passing the Senate in the early hours this morning, it seems a good time to write about Aboriginal life expectancy. Aboriginal people have a much lower life expectancy than non Aboriginal people in Australia. At birth Aboriginal men can expect to live about 12Continue Reading
A roundup of the links that caught my eye this week. This week the big news for stats geeks was the release of the Australian census, with lots of news. I haven’t had time to play with the data yet, but here is the link. @mattcowgill points out that inContinue Reading
The Australian Census for 2011 was released this week, and they’ve got some fabulous tools for playing with the data on their website. Here’s my personal infographic:Continue Reading
A roundup of links that I’ve found of interest this week. Some Daniel Kahnemen links: Tim Harford interviews psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Jonah Lehrer from the New Yorker quotes some of Daniel Kahnemen’s research on Why Smart people are Stupid, and a summaryContinue Reading
A roundup of the links that I’ve found interesting this week: Why the Rules of Language Are Both Arbitrary and Essential, Steven Pinker on the false fronts in the language wars between those who argue that the language has defined rules, and you are either correct or incorrect, and thoseContinue Reading
I’ve just come back from the Actuaries Institute’s biennial Financial Services Forum; a forum for actuaries and other professionals in the financial services industry dealing with wealth management, financial planning, life insurance, banking and risk management. I’m hoping to post in more detail about some of the topics that interestedContinue Reading
This video from Harvard philosopher Professor Michael Sandel talks about Justice. What is a fair start in life? How should you think about fairness? He asks his students about their start at Harvard. How did they get there? Was it privilege or hard work? After most of them agree theyContinue Reading
Designed using Magazine News Byte Premium. Powered by WordPress.