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Actuary, It’s Fiction<br />
Is it a myth? Or is it a legend? We investigate the elusiveness of the actuarial profession...<br />
SOMETIMES, I SEE ACTUARIAL STUDIES to be like<br />
swimming in deep water. Most people are content<br />
with just floating on the surface and aren’t<br />
bothered to go any deeper – at least not without the<br />
right gear and motivation. Only the divers – actuaries<br />
– would take the trip to the dark depths. One of these<br />
divers would emerge and say “Hey, there’s a Munnopis<br />
Isopod down there.” The people on the surface then<br />
reply “Ok, well there’s a Munnopis Isopod down there,<br />
but I don’t know what that really is, and since I don’t<br />
want to go down there I’ll just accept that Munnopis<br />
Isopods exists.”<br />
At least, that’s how I see the wider world viewing<br />
Actuarial Studies, and it’s left me wondering – why<br />
aren’t actuaries as well known as other careers?<br />
I decided to look into my own history where I first<br />
heard about these “actuaries”. It was during primary<br />
school, when “scoubidous” were cool, MSN users still<br />
existed, and Miley Cyrus’ dance numbers were twerkfree.<br />
Here, I will digress to fellow readers that my<br />
favourite TV show at that time was Kim Possible. Now<br />
Kim had a friend called Ron Stoppable, and his father<br />
-Mr. Stoppable- was an actuary. However simplified<br />
his profession had been, I watched Mr. Stoppable battle<br />
the green-spandex wearing villain, “The Mathter” in a<br />
chamber where mathematical equations could be laserprojected<br />
from the head. I was left fascinated with maths<br />
being used in such a way to calculate the probability of<br />
certain events occurring.<br />
So, that was how I found out about actuaries. Now that I<br />
think about it, how did I know about other occupations,<br />
like lawyers? I read To Kill a Mockingbird. And how<br />
about crime investigators? NCIS. Home furnishers?<br />
Better Homes and Gardens.<br />
Fiction. That is the sole factor to the actuary existential<br />
crisis.<br />
How can anyone know about actuaries if they are a<br />
diminutive part of the macrocosmic fictional world?<br />
Determined to find that such a species existed, I did<br />
some rigorous research with my all-reliable source,<br />
Wikipedia. What came up? A scant 1400-word article.<br />
As a further disappointment, actuaries were referred<br />
to as an “insurance investigator” or “risk-assessment<br />
expert”, as if the word “Actuary” was avoided like the<br />
proverbial plague.<br />
ACTUALITE <strong>Issue</strong> 1 | Page 13
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