I believe that triage is technically dividing people into three buckets.
Those who will probably recover without medical care
Those who will die without medical care, and will likely recover with it
Those who are more likely to die even with medical care.
Normally, sick and wounded people in all three categories are offered care, but on the battlefield there often aren’t enough resources to care for everyone, so the medics concentrate on those the triagers have put into the second bucket.
I don’t remember the scene in MASH, so maybe that’s what it’s about. But armies certainly also have people who estimate the dead and wounded, and they are more like actuaries. (and aren’t involved in triage.)
I remember the 2011 tsunami (and there were other major earthquakes elsewhere), and I had to set up a claim reserve on certain lines of business, which involves not only considering the total deaths in the area, but likelihood of us covering them (and for how much). It was pretty rough as an estimate, but we couldn’t book 0.
In my blog, I used to do “Mortality Monday” posts… right up til Stu was diagnosed w/ metastatic cancer. I stopped doing those posts, for about a year, and then I went right back into it.
There’s actually a lot of good news in mortality trends (the childhood mortality trend has been amazing to me), and obviously some bad news (the opioid/other drug/suicide trend has sucked). Sometimes, you come across surprises, and sometimes you wonder what the drivers of particular changes are.
My own family benefited from life insurance when my dad died at age 38 (and my mom had to send some extra stuff to the insurer, because the policy was less than a year old… had to show my dad didn’t know he was going to die from a heart attack that year… but the payment was not unduly delayed.) So I have a generally warm attitude toward the industry.
I really struggle with my own mortality, but when it comes to talking about plan experience, the morbidness of it disappears. “We had a gain of 2% due to higher mortality than expected this year, it was a good year.” (made-up numbers, but typical conversation from results internal meetings from pension consulting)
Yes, those are real people, and no, I don’t think death is something to be treated lightly, and I would never tell a family that their family member’s death was a net positive to a balance sheet, but it’s a distant concept for me when I’m talking about work.
I heard a story about the account executive pissing off the client by taking about “favorable mortality experience”, which was the death of the beloved CEO.
I was once a member of an actuarial club that sponsored a dinner for HS kids who did well on some standardized math test. Had it at a fancy hotel, invited the parents, club paid all the expenses (maybe only for one parent though and the second had to pay… I can’t remember exactly).
Actuaries & actuarial students sat at each table and we had some simple actuarial “conversation starters” to talk about (What would you want to know about someone before deciding how much to charge them for car insurance? Who has a higher life expectancy: a newborn baby or a 60 year-old man? Which one has a higher chance of dying next year? Which kind of doctor do you think has the highest malpractice insurance premiums and why? Are men or women more likely to become disabled? Why does a higher deductible lower premium? What percentage of dental claims are for routine care? What is the fastest growing type of insurance?) Towards the end of dinner a couple actuaries gave presentations congratulating the kids on doing well on the test and talking about how great it is being an actuary and how to become one.
It was actually a pretty neat event. But then the metric for being invited suddenly changed and hardly anyone was eligible any more and it wasn’t quite the same. And apparently we couldn’t just change it up to some minimum score on the math section of the SAT because we didn’t have access to those scores… though I’m guessing it still would have been possible through the schools… dunno.
And periodically we’d get some of those kids as interns and later employees.
It wasn’t specifically targeting racial minorities… just anyone who did well on this math test within some certain geographical area.
But you could do something similar with, say, the AP Calculus class at inner city high schools that are high percentage minority. (And even a lot of the white kids would be economically disadvantaged.) Or if you wanted to start younger then pick an earlier target. The kids taking Algebra I in junior high perhaps.
I don’t know how much value there is in pitching the career to people who hate math and do poorly in it in school. They’re just not going to pick a career that involves getting paid to take math tests no matter what.
I went to an event like that in high school. I never worked for the sponsoring company, but i got a cool calculator and a nice dinner, and a brochure about the actuarial exams. And hey, i did learn that “actuary” is a thing.
I like that idea. I also like the idea of providing a nice calculator, too. Maybe not a boring SOA approved one, but a nice graphing calculator they will need in college.
And also discussing the career options for math-minded folks. Maybe bring along some data scientists from the company too, so it’s not too actuarially preachy.
