First On-Site Interview

Today, I decided to solve the P-h-D vs. j-o-b quandary by taking matters into my own hands.

As you know, I had a telephone interview with a company in a southern state on Tuesday. I contacted that company by telephone and let them know that "someone I spoke with has made an offer". (I did not let them know that this was a university, not a company.) I asked them if they were willing to make an offer, and if so, how much.

They said that they would be unable to make an offer now. They wanted me to come down and see the company in person. This could be done either over two days (Monday-Tuesday) or one day (Monday). After I visited on Monday, they'd made an offer, if they were so inclined, on Tuesday.

So I said, "yes". The company offers health benefits, profit sharing, and something like a 401K where I can prepare for retirement.

Thus, on Monday, I'll fly down to see the company up close, and then fly back on the same day. If the offer is good enough in terms of salary -- then I'll become a working actuary. If it isn't, then I'll take the university path.

Hey, it's a solution, at least.

Decisions, Decisions

Okay, huge supercalifragilistic news.

Remember my application to the Ph. D. program in Risk Management at my university.

I was accepted. It comes with a $15,000/yr stipend and waiver of tuition. Hopefully, I can grind out a Ph. D. in four years.

So I have three options:

1. Accept the offer.
2. Lean on the my interviewers and say that I need an answer now.
3. Reject both and hope for the best.

Talk about tough. I don't know what it says about fate, or human decision, but everything in the world involves risk. I might have to change the title of this blog.

Wrote my life a letter while she's in Pittsburgh. I'll let you know what the decision is.

Helpful Links

I added a list of International Actuary Links to the list on the right. For those who don't want to move the mouse, the list is here . Have fun!

E(f(X))

Whenever I get home, I look for the blinking light on the answering machine. That means messages, perhaps from employers! Unfortunately, today's message was a hang-up, so back to applying for jobs again.

In Dr. N's class, we did negative binomial problems. At the beginning of class, Dr. N asked me, "so have you been to another university?" Yep, I have a degree in math from 1987. Looks like he found the ringer in his classroom.

Dr. Z didn't return the Intro Stats test, but he covered some new material -- thank goodness, I was tired of listening to him go over elementary probability for the last month. The infamous "Student T" distribution was introduced. Why you would choose this distribution for samples where n < 30 isn't made clear, but at least it's new interesting material.

Dr. S talked about Moment Generating Functions. Yes, every actuary knows what they are, but as it turns out E(X^3), E(X^4) and all those other higher moments have a use. As it turns out, from Taylor's Theorem, any function has a polynomial expansion (plus remainer) for a certain interval about x, so you could estimate E(f(X)) by finding E(a-sub-n * X^N + a-sub-(n-1) * X^(N-1) + a-sub-1 * X + a-sub 0 + R(X)), and pray that R(X) doesn't blow up.

Other than that, time to rest, do some problems, prepare for the Intro Probability test next Wednesday.

I also notice that the blog gets a lot of hits regarding Exam P. If I knew what information people were looking for, I'd point them to it.

Another Interview Down

Okay, that's another interview down.

All and all, I think it went very well. The interview was with a consulting actuary firm in a southern state that does actuarial valuations for about 160 clients or so. It's a small office of about 9 actuaries or so.

My interviewer did most of the talking. My wife said that's a good sign. I don't know why it's a good sign; probably, it means that he's not "tuned out" and just passing time letting you talk so that the interviewer can be over.

We talked about the work of consulting actuaries. Since the office is small, the job will call on a lot of responsibility -- I'll probably go to work immediately doing benefit calculations.

He asked, "what do you see the next step as being in the interview process?" I said that it would be meeting with them or considering an offer. So possibly, I (and my wife) might be asked to fly to the location to meet the actuaries who work there, undoubtedly to have dinner with them as well.

I'll know by Tuesday of next week. I wrote a "thank-you" note to the interviewer, and sent it on.

As for the interview I had last week? Still haven't heard from them. If I don't hear from them by Friday, I'll assume I'll hear nothing at all. In the meantime, I'll continue to apply for jobs and study.

For those few readers considering an interview, this article might be of interest. The article is here and discusses the most important question you'll ever be asked in an interview:

"Tell me about yourself....

I've been asked that question in almost every interview I've had with someone. I never realized how many candidates wipe out their chances with the way they answer. It was a good read; my interviewer today didn't ask it but both of the interviewers of my other two actuarial interviews asked it as Question #1.

Another Nibble

A small consulting firm located in a Southern state just gave me a call. As it turns out, they found my resume through the university website.

So they'll call tomorrow, and I'll do a phone interview. I guess that prayer cloth has started to work.

P. S. No problem on the stat test. I tied for the first one finished.

Meet Mike the Actuary

I added a link to Mike The Actuary's Musings . It's more a politics and industry blog, but I enjoy reading it and hope you will too.

A joke: "How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?"

Answer: "None. The free market will take care of it."

Big Monday

I've returned after a weekend home. Went to Kentucky to see my mom. We attended my aunt's 60th wedding anniversary.

This left me with a lot of things due on Monday. Here's how I handled them.

1) An elementary probability quiz in Dr. N's class. It was easy, but I blew the last problem by failing to realize that 5X + 2(3-X) = 3X + 6. I had a 2-X term for the 3-X term. And of course, when you're calculating E(Y) = E(3X + 6) = 3E(X) + 6, that bad algebra makes all the difference.

2) A ton of homework due in Dr. S's class. His lecture today was regarding the transformation of (X,Y) (ordered pair of random variables, X, Y) into (R, theta), i.e., polar coordinate form. This involved Riemann sums, determinants, and a discussion that wandered all over the place. What anyone got out of that lecture is
beyond me.

As for the difficulty of the homework, some people in the class got only 2 or 3 problems out of about 20. I got about 10 or 12. Everyone moaned about the difficulty. I had my work 90% done before my trip; I'm tired of looking at those problems now. Maybe he'll discuss them in class; most likely, he won't.

3) Exam today in Elementary Statistics. A rehash of elementary probability, plus the Central Limit Theorem added on. There's no point in studying at the problems are so easy. Usually, I study obsessively even on minor tests, but I had to go see Mom and it didn't seem worthwhile. He gave a practice test in class which I aced. We'll see how I do in the real thing.

Still applying for jobs. It looks like the summer internships are filled up -- I got two e-mails saying "sorry, full up for summer". I'll keep putting my resume out for full-time work. I drastically cut down the size of my resume -- why put all of my nursing jobs down if I'm not applying for a nursing position? That cut my resume from 2 pages to 1 page.

Mom gave me an invaluable tool -- a prayer cloth. In the Pentecostal religion, church members annoint a square of cloth with oil and pray over it. I'm not a Pentecostal, but I'll take the prayer cloth if it will help me.

The Actuarial Interview

My wife found the newest link at the right hand side of the page. The link title is self-explanatory: "The Actuarial Interview: What to Expect" . I'm adding it so I don't forget where it is.

I hope I might have need of it.

A Passion for "EXCEL"-lence

I just finished my phone interview for the internship. Boy, what a megillah. It was one hour long, and you can't imagine how exhausting these interviews are.

They really put you on the spot in a lot of things. A lot of questions about your past, about projects you were on (whether in class or in the working world) and your role in those projects. I had a lot of questions about a Macroeconomics project that I frankly barely remembered, and my only hope was that I remembered it accurately and didn't come off looking like an idiot for being unneccessarily vague.

At the end, the interviewer asked questions about my computer knowledge. She stated various computer programs, and asked me to rate my expertise from "1" to "10" on them.

As for Excel, I could only rate it a "4" -- and that's being generous. I play around with spreadsheets for games, but I've never had a class in Excel. The interviewer stated that that would be the biggest concern. The internship would involve loading massive amounts of data into an Excel spreadsheet, and this would obviously require an easy familiarity with Excel. So that didn't leave me feeling good.

However, the interviewer will (supposedly) get back with me by either the end of the week or by next week. If the interview moves up to the next step, then I'd have another interview, this time with a working actuary. The interview would be more technically grounded. Goodness knows what it would entail.

So my plans are:
1. By an Excel computer manual from Barnes and Noble or somewhere. Learn Excel thoroughly, so that when that question is asked again, I answer with a "10".

2. Continue looking for work.

I haven't even been able to think or do much, I've been dwelling so much on this interview. It's over. It's time to move on, look for other jobs...although after my second phone interview, if this one doesn't lead anywhere either, I'll have to put the feeling of discouragement behind me and soldier on.

As for buying that Excel manual, I just got off the phone with my wife. She suggests that I try the tutorial that supposedly comes with the program. So I'll try that before I purchase an expensive manual.

And now, it's back to doing one of the hardest jobs of an actuary -- keeping hope alive.

Joint Distribution of U=aX+b, V=cY+d

So my wife and I have talked quite a bit about my "interview" on Tuesday. It's just an interview for an internship, but internships are very important.

If I were chosen, I'd have a tough decision to make -- first, if I am also accepted for the Ph. D. program, do I abandon that? Face it, as a Ph. D. student, I'd be working for four years at a pittance with no guarantee of a Ph. D. Second, if I take the internship, and are offered a job, then if I have to work in California, do we move there?

A few things have already been decided. If I am offered the internship, I'll go to an Extended Stay Hotel to live. It's basically a room with a bed, a TV, a shower and a sink. I'll live there for 10-12 weeks. We figure that I'll break even, but the advantage is that I'll make connections in the industry. I'll probably use my wife's car while I'm there.

Right now, I have a quiz in Intro Statistics do tomorrow -- the quiz is about the binomial and normal distributions, which we've discussed ad nauseam in all of my probability classes. I'm not too worried about the quiz, although you never know.

On Monday, we have not only an exam in Intro Stats, but we also have a problem set to turn in to Math Foundations (run by Dr. S). Those are some of the hardest programs I've ever seen. I doubt that any of them would show up on Exam P. For example, there are a lot of problems of the type U=X+Y and V=X/Y where X and Y are random variables and you are to find g(U, V). The ACTEX manual explains the solution nicely -- it depends on a Jacobian, the difference of individual products of partial differentials -- but we've never been taught the method in any classes and certainly, not in this one.

Dr. S says "I don't expect you to get all of these problems." Once again, he leaves his expectations unnamed. I wonder if he's a fan of Robert Pirsig, who wrote "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence" who did not believe in grading, because he wanted his students to become knowledge-motivated and not grade-motivated.

In actuarial science, this might be impossible. Everyone in that room is grade-obsessed, even me. I'd like to be knowledge-obsessed, but it can be hard. Haven't done as much as I'd like to this weekend. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

An Offer of an Internship

After applying for every job under the sun, I was contacted by phone and offered an interview for an internship for an insurance company in California.

Ain't that the way life goes? Very funny, actually...here I am, I jump through hoops to apply for the Ph. D. program and BOOM!, I get a nibble.

My wife is familiar with California and she knew the location of the town. There is a potential for full time employment out here...and the internship is 10-12 weeks long...just long enough to fill up the summer.

I could just put off applying for the Ph. D. until 2007, and take the internship. The prospect of a job offer comes after the internship.

All I have to say is...wow. Then again, this is only an interview. It is not a tendered offer. So we'll see where we go from here. But still, after beating my head against a wall, it's good to see a crack in the wall after all the cracks in my head.

"But I Have to Eat Lunch!"

Spring break is over, and my wife and I are back home.

Right now, I'm "diversifying my portfolio", so to speak. I continue to apply for actuary positions while working on getting my application for the Ph. D. in Risk Management together. I have two of the three necessary transcripts and today at 10 am I'll be taking the GRE. I've taken the GRE before, but that was a looooong time ago, and the committee (which I suspect consists entirely of Dr. G) requires that one's GRE scores be no more than five years old.

My task for yesterday was a conversation with Dr. S, and the discussion was "why do you want a degree in risk management?" You can't say that the reason is "to hedge my bets", but I've always wanted to be an academic. And we had a looooooong discussion, about his work, and the work of economists, and the work of others in the department. It was more like a long extended chat from a person not known as being particularly chatty.

He wanted to know if I had any ideas regarding what kinds of questions I was interested in: actually, I had three:

1. My wife's "sales quota" problem, which I stated as a completely different problem. Given that sales representatives are assigned to clients (which they cannot easily switch, since building a relationship with a client is important), how does one tell whether a salesperson is exceptional vs. one that just has "good leads"?

2. The "hedge fund" for baseball players: can one diversify risk to the market when those risk involve individuals. Say, could one set up a Johnny Damon hedge fund, taking insurance on Damon against the adverse event that Damon's statistics go south?

3. The "rank and yank problem" -- does Jack Welsh's "Rank and Yank" philosophy really work?

Dr. S stated that those were more management problems, and less risk management problems. He gave a good example on research that no one, apparently, has done: decision making for transplants. You're on a waiting list for a new heart, you get the call at 3 am in the morning -- be at the hospital in one hour for a new heart. The operation has a 30 percent chance of killing you. What kinds of decisions do people make, and what does this say about similar market decisions? (Dr. S added that a company's decision maker -- faced with a similar looking "30 percent chance of going bankrupt" decision -- doesn't face the same risks. He might get fired, but he won't lose his life.)

I was very surprised that no one had done work on any of this yet. It was a fascinating type of problem. Can one generalize a solution?

Anyway, we talked for an hour and forty-five minutes. I finally had to beg off for lunch, as I had a class and had not eaten yet. Dr. S will talk to Dr. G, so it all looks promising. But my wife had me applying for new actuary positions the same day.

So how do I spend my days off? Taking four-hour exams. Now you know why I'm so crazy.

Pittsburgh Pee Ay

Now on vacation in Pittsburgh, Pee Ay. Of course, since the motto of being an actuary is "get to work -- you're not being paid to believe in the power of your dreams", I've not been entirely idle. I've done some of the problem sets in Dr. N's class, and have done some Chapter 6 and 7 problems from the ACTEX manual. (I can't believe that I'm on my way to working through the ACTEX manual for Exam P.)

The biggggg news is that the name of this blog might change from "An Actuary's Progress" to a "A Risk Manager's Progress". Lemme explain.

About two or three weeks ago, I happened to meet one of my professors from the summer semester, Dr. G, by chance. He suggested that I apply for a Ph. D. in Risk Management. And of course, you know, I've been turning it over in my head ever sense. Because when someone offers you something like that, and you pass it up, you spend the rest of your life wondering, "what would have happened if...?"

My wife finally got tired of hearing it and said, "hey, if you're interested in in, why don't you talk to Dr. G?" So, I did.

Now, we're past the deadline for Ph. D. application, but Dr. G says there's a chance I can slide under the radar. Really, here's all I need:

* The scores of the GRE General Test -- I'll take that on March 14th
* Filling out the application -- yawn.
* Writing a two page essay basically stating why you want to be a Ph. D. -- Dr. G says there's no way to mess that up; they basically want to know that you don't want the Ph. D. for "status" purposes. They want to give Ph. D's to people who will either teach or use them in industry/think tank jobs where the Ph. D. is a requirement for success.
* Getting three letters of recommendation.

The hard part might be getting the three letters. The people who best know what I can do I haven't talked to them in 20 years -- those are my math professors at BC. And Professor T has retired and he seems to be hard to get in touch with.

Dr. G will write one of the letters -- that's letter #1. I asked Dr. N to write a letter, and he said "yes", so that's letter #2.

Dr. S, however, stated that he would like to know more about me before writing a letter. So I'll meet him on Monday. As it turns out, he got his Ph. D. from Carnegie Mellon, so I might bring him a Clark Bar. (Carnegie Mellon is in Pittsburgh and Clark Bars are manufactures in Pittsburgh.)

But hey...even if it doesn't work out, I can continue with my actuarial plans. But...if I do get in, it's four years of very hard work.

We'll see what happens.

Of the Hundreds and Hundreds of Problems....

...not much to report. Still applying for jobs. And now...it's Spring Break! Woo-hoo!!

Well...if you're an actuary reading this, you know there's no such thing as "woo-hoo" when you have exams to pass. All this Spring Break time means is more time to study for Exam P.

And don't let it be said that I don't have a lot of problems to run through. About 120 problems Dr. S gave us, a whole lot of problems from Prob II that Professor T gave us, the May 2003 exam, the ACTEX manual -- all of which should keep me busy in Pittsburgh for the next week while my wife's working.

My wife goes to Pittsburgh for about 2 or 3 days a week on business, so this week, I'll go up with her. We'll hang out with her cousin and her cousin's husband, N and D. And of course, see the sites of Pittsburgh (I've already been to the Andy Warhol Museum, but I would love to see a game at PNC Park.)

And of course, moving to Pittsburgh as an actuary isn't out of the question, either. That is, if I get an actuary job. Job. JOB! Did I mention JOB?

Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey

Back home. Took two quizzes today, one in Dr. N's class and one with Dr. S, and I think I punched through both of them. A feel good feeling. I hope I can punch through the ACTEX manual tonight as well, because I'm exhausted. Just worked out for 30 minutes, showered, ready for dinner.

Applied to some new jobs. From ACS in Stamford, CT; Philadelphia, PA and Secaucus, NJ. In my opinion, that counts as three jobs, and one job from NY. Four jobs total!

Here are some places I didn't apply:

* Jacksonville, FL -- wife can't stand Jacksonville, FL
* Keene, NH -- does my wife want to move that far north?
* Cleveland, OH -- does my wife want to move to Cleveland? Too cold?
* Minneapolis, MN -- 1) only an internship, and 2) snow and more snow

Busy going to Actuary.net and reading articles of interest. Found this article very interesting. It's about the calculation of the force of mortality, mu-sub-x, which is (mu-sub-x) = B*(c^x). Supposedly, this works for people ages 30 to 55, although the article never bothered to mention what B and c are.

Aside from that, you have to go to the Lee-Carter method for a more complex estimate of mortality, and there they lost me because I don't know stochastic processes. Anyone want to hire an actuary that doesn't know stochastic processes? I can learn!

And I did learn hedging today. Hedging kicks ass.