I am a card carrying member of AARP, divorced, father of three sons, and live in New Jersey. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in math and work as a casualty actuary. Actuary means a mathematician specializing in insurance. Casualty means property and liability (hurricanes and malpractice lawsuits) insurance, rather than life insurance or employee benefits.
I work as one of the senior pricing actuaries for a large reinsurance company. (Definition of reinsurance: Boring squared.)I have taken a number of insurance-related exams since I have been working. My professional designations that I have earned by passing exams include FCAS, CPCU, ARM, ARe, AIM, and FCIA. Recently I have taken exams in Finance, Regression and Time Series. I have also become a notary public.
I am also pleased to announce that my 2001 actuarial short story Proof placed second in the 2001 SOA Fiction Contest. I think my 2003 actuarial short story 1 + 1 = 0 is better, but it did not place in the money. I think some insurers use some ideas from my 2005 work, Rating Variables. My 2007 story Actuarial Testing, asks whether actuarial students are using illegal substances.
I grew up in New York City. I played softball and chess in my youth. While in college I "did"
the NYC subway system with some friends - traveling to every station on a single fare - it took
26 hours, 40 minutes. I also took Trailways buses across the country one summer - that took
about a month.
Then when I got to California, I played a little - Roller Derby! If I had been either a little faster or a little bigger in those days, my career might have turned out much differently.
My oldest son attends UNC Asheville and is interested in sociology and environmental work. My middle son graduated from the University of Virginia, with a degree in political science and a minor in economics, and he has entered the working world. My youngest son plays high school lacrosse, is learning to drive , and is growing up - and tall - too fast. All three have had part-time jobs selling ice cream. You want sprinkles with that? I am also quite proud to have a niece who graduated from Yale and a nephew who graduated from NYU. Dilbert has become my favorite comic strip. I have an eclectic collection of fifties and sixties oldies CDs in the car, and I have been known to sing some of them to my kids (sometimes as a punishment). For those who know me, believe it or not I came out of the musical closet and made a fool of myself singing a song in an amateur performance a few years ago. I am available for the right venue.
I think there is a good trend in what is happening in mathematics education. I published an article in the September, 1990 issue of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Mathematics Teacher magazine, and I have spoken at a few math teacher meetings. I try to encourage teachers to incorporate more real-world applications in their classes, instead of those silly word problems from my school days.
You never know where I will turn up. Amazingly, I have been quoted in two unusual places. One is page 271 of Courage to Love (by Will Leckie and Barry Stopfel, Doubleday, 1997), and the other is page 46 of Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella (by William Safire, Crown Publishers, 2001). Curious why of all people they quoted me? Take a look!
I once thought I was the only person who did an occasional mileage run, but there are many of us. My longest was round-trip Newark to Anchorage, with a few stops in between, within 26 hours. I recently did EWR-LAX-CLE-ORD-EWR in under 24 hours.
Since you have access to the Web to be reading this page, life must be treating you pretty well. How about giving something back? Over the years my volunteer activities have included recording math textbooks on tape for blind students, driving a van for the Interfaith Hospitality Network which provides temporary shelter for homeless people in churches and synagogues, coaching T-ball and C-ball little league, and serving on the board of a religious organization. I currently read a weekly newspaper on tape for the visually limited at EIES of NJ and am their webmaster, and I volunteer at The Lighthouse in Newark. I am currently the actuarial liaison for the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at Dallas. So pick something, and volunteer. Thanks.
As a start, how about joining Mickey's Team? "Be a hero. Be a donor." You can get an organ donor card by calling 1-800-477-MICK.
Some of My Other Web Pages
Please send me a note to say you've visited, at fcas@aol.com
This url is http://members.aol.com/fcas/index.html and was last updated Jul. 17, 2008.
