Thane Plambeck explains what actuaries do and why they're in demand. There's a shortage of people who can turn data into products, and actuaries combine math, statistics, and software skills. The field offers strong job prospects and high starting salaries, mainly in risk analysis and insurance.
Chapters
So here are just some examples of— for the spontaneous human combustion thing, you want to predict your risk from a breath test. Say you know a lot about English, you can solve puzzles. If you're Facebook, you want to predict what kind of ads a person is going to click on, you've got a lot of available information. These are just typical problems that are very amenable to machine learning. So you're saying that to Bayesian methods. And this is a huge area right now. It's really booming in terms of just uptake in startup community and also in the investment community. And there's a shortage of people who really know how to do it well. And the problem with big data right now is really that we have too much of it and there's a shortage of people that can take it and make it into actionable things that people want to do. So— I was just wondering, what skills do they lack? What skills do people lack? I think it's a combination of— a lot of math people are pretty nerdy, and they just are interested in math. But there is a lot of math in it and then you also need software implementation. So you've got to get both math people and software people involved. And then you have to have an application area and you have to make all that stuff work together. And I think a lot of— I don't know. I mean, I don't know the answer. I'm just speculating. But it's certainly something that if you hang up— well, here's an interesting thing. Okay, how about this? In the United States, there's one major that has 2 properties, one college major. The first property is it has the fewest number of people who fail to find employment in their first year after they graduate. And the second thing that it ranks number one is the starting salary. And I wonder if anyone knows what major that is. Engineering? Computer science? Is that computer science? Accounting? It's not engineering. I mean, it is a sciencey thing. It's a very specific major, very specific. You may not even have heard of it. Business mathematics? That's close. What kind of business? Statistical analysis? Yes, it is statistical analysis, but what kind of Econometrics? No, not econometrics. What kind of analysis? Think back to— hmm? Business statistics? Business statistics? No, it's much more specific. Think back to one of the slides I showed. Who would have made a slide that showed this horribly morbid thing that shows how— what's your probability of dying in the next year? People who deal with health insurance statistics, like actuaries. Actuaries, yes. Actuarial science. How many people have never heard of actuarial science? Yeah, I'm not surprised. So go back to your university if you graduated, you know, go back and type in— go to your university website and type in actuarial science and see whether they had a department. So most of the people who get this— so it's people who analyze risk, okay? Yeah. For insurance companies mostly. Thank you.
