the official actuary woman homepage

the revised actuary woman faq

[if you've got a question for actuary woman, mail her and maybe you'll be added to the faq!]

actuary woman is now in los angeles, working at sunamerica. so far, so good...

Q:what happened to "actuary girl"?
A:actuary girl's in her second job now. plus harvard graduates are women (or womyn), not girls. plus she's an FSA. so she has at last decided that it's time for her title to reflect her maturity and sophistication. also she sounds more like WonderWoman this way.

Q:who is actuary woman?
A:her full name used to be actuary girl: she's kind of like batman, but she is neither a bat nor a man. she was affectionately referred to as "ag (skolbmbsinabnam)" (or just "ag" by the lazy). actuary woman is an entity whose location is so precise that her identity cannot be known without violating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. she used to spend a fair amount of time in harvard's math lounge, in the big camera-shaped building. she's done the new york thing, now she's doing the california thing, and she's dead serious about this whole actuary thing.

Q:just how serious is she about this whole actuary thing?
A:you haven't been paying attention. start over and try reading all the words this time.

Q:so...what's an actuary?
A:that's the big question. the short version is, actuaries are involved in risk management. they usually work for insurance companies; they might determine, for example, how long someone will live and thus decide what insurance rates he should pay. it's cool stuff. for more info, check out the SOA (the Society of Actuaries) or one of the links below.

Q:okay, so why does actuary woman want to do this?
A:that's the other big question...when she realized that she'd never make it through med school because of a deep-rooted hatred of all things scientific, actuary woman remembered that her tenth-grade trig teacher had mentioned the actuarial field as an excellent choice for her. [Mr. Evans, if you're out there, thank you.] so she started gathering as much information as she could, and the more she learned, the more she liked it. it seems a practical way to use math. no, that is not an oxymoron.
actuary woman has been doing this "actuary thang" for a while now -- full-time for a few years, even a couple of internships back in the day. details here. she's also passed a whole bunch of exams -- enough that she'll never have to take any more. ever. aw, yea.

Q:and what's with the lower-case thing?
A:it's called an artistic statement. deal with it.

actuarial links

Gordon Challes' page with information geared more toward Canadian actuaries. but some of the more general stuff is applicable to the States, too.
Balducci's Actuarial Web Pages: a collection of links to a bunch o' actuarial sites.
Actuary.com - all the actuarial links you ever wanted but were too afraid to search for...
Actuarial Jokes: courtesy of Jerry Tuttle, one of the first people who ever wrote to actuary woman (back in the day when she was still actuary girl!).
Actuarial Discussion Forum: where actuarial rebels talk about exams, work, and this very webpage.

sorry the aghp is so minimal right now, folks. actuary woman is looking for suggestions about what to add.

got any ideas? mail actuary woman and we'll do our best.

thanks for dropping in. check back...we're doing our best to be the #1 source for all things actuarial on the web! but these things take time...patience is a virtue.

the aghp is maintained by actuary woman herself.