asymptotically approaching the starting line

Source

The liveblogging felt very useful yesterday, so I'm going to try that again.

[2025-06-17 Tue 15:08]
Today's personal recap goes elsewhere, but let's keep the liveblogging happening here.
[2025-06-17 Tue 15:34]
Now I've gotten a little bit of personal stuff written. I would like to perhaps write for other people?
[2025-06-17 Tue 17:23]

Well, I wrote a bit for other folks to read.. Did that really take me two hours? Seems a little tough to believe. I know that I did some other things while I was working, but I spent a lot of time futzing about with appearances.

I guess that I can tell from the timestamp on the post that I started editing at about 16:00. Not terribly efficient. But perhaps I'm learning my way around, and I'll get better at things as I go.

[2025-06-17 Tue 18:47]
Today has not, all in all, been a banner day for me. But I can continue to do some number of useful things.

Registration for the actuary exam

This is the next big step in my job hunt, and there is a deadline tomorrow. Let's get past it.

The Society of Actuaries is the organization that administers the test. Now I'm a member! I'm eventually going to regret having saved my password.

Here are some exam rules .

On calculators, whence more :

Only the following models of Texas Instruments calculators are approved for SOA exams:

  • BA-35
  • BA II Plus
  • BA II Plus Professional
  • TI – 30Xa or TI – 30XA, same model just different casing, both approved.
  • TI-30X II (IIS solar or IIB battery)
  • TI-30XS MultiView (or XB battery)

Candidates may bring more than one calculator into the examination room along with extra batteries, provided each calculator is on the approved list.

Apparently I have to pay for the exam first, then make a testing appointment .

And now I have a candidate ID. Apparently I can't actually schedule my exam until the testing company processes my transaction, which has an expected delay of an hour or two. The actual exam will happen somewhere on the interval July 18–29.

What I'm interested in now is the study material. Let's pause for a moment and try to find it.

Searching for study materials

I am not seeming to find the same set of pages online that I did before. I could have sworn that study material was included in the exam registration fee. But let's have a look at it on this other computer instead.

I've found a page of guidance for studying for the P exam. The main guideline is a syllabus, and there is a list of folks who sell preparatory materials.

The syllabus

Topics:

  1. General probability (23—30%). That is, seven to nine questions.

    The candidate will understand basic concepts of probability and discrete mathematics.

    • Set functions, Venn diagrams, etc.
    • Combinatorics, permutations, etc.
    • Independent events
    • Mutually exclusive events
    • Addition and multiplication of probabilities
    • Conditional probabilities
    • Bayes's Theorem for conditional probabilities

  2. Univariate random variables (44–50%). That is, thirteen to fifteen questions.

    The candidate will understand discrete univariate distributions, continuous univariate distributions, and their applications.

    Discrete distributions:

    • binomial
    • geometric
    • hypergeometric
    • negative binomial
    • Poisson
    • uniform

    Continuous distributions:

    • beta
    • exponential
    • gamma
    • lognormal
    • normal
    • uniform

    Skills:

    • Concepts of probability, random variables, probability density functions, cumulative distribution functions
    • Conditional probabilities
    • Expected values, moments, mode, median, percentiles
    • Calculate insurance payments, including deductibles, coinsurance, benefit limits, inflation, etc.
    • Calculate expected values, variances, standard deviations of the loss random variable and the corresponding payment amount random variables.

  3. Multivariate random variables (23—30%). Again, seven to nine questions.

    Multivariate distributions in discrete and continuous settings, distribution of order statistics for independent random variables, for linear combinations of independent random variables, and applications.

    • Joint probability functions and joint cdfs for discrete random variables
    • Conditional and marginal probability functions for discrete random variables
    • Moments for join, conditional, and marginal discrete distributions
    • variance and standard deviation for conditional and marginal probability distributions for discrete random variables
    • Covariance and correlation coefficient calculations (discrete).
    • Joint distribution of order statistics for a set of independent random variables
    • Probabilities for linear combinations of independent discrete random variables and continuous normally-distributed variables.
    • Moments for linear combinations of independent random variables.
    • Central Limit Theorem to approximate probabilities for linear combinations of i.i.d. random variables

Some suggested books:

  • Ross (2019), A first course in probability.
  • Wackerly, mendenhall, and Scheaffer (2008), Mathematical statistics with applications.
  • Hassett, Stewart, and Milovanovic (2021), Probability for risk management.
  • Asimow and Maxwell (2015), Probability and Statistics with applications.
  • Hogg, Tanis, and Zimmerman (2020), Probability and Statistical Inference.
  • Leemis (2018), Probability.

Each of these texts has some curriculum spanning about eight chapters, with some guidance about sections which can be skipped.

Sample exams

There are also sample questions and solutions. These are separate from the sample exams, which pull questions at random from the question pool.

There seem to be about six hundred sample questions – enough for twenty exams, with no repeats. The solutions are pretty dense algebraically, not much good to learn from.

Tomorrow I'll see which of the books I can access for what costs, and come up with a study curriculum. I'll also shop for approved calculators.