Like many others I joined AO as part of the exodus from the CAS website when the Water Cooler got shut down. That was a fun community that basically did move en masse to the AO.
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Sheās under 50 (as am I), so weād bring the average age downā¦
I agree that part of what helped the AO is that people came for the exam discussion and stayed for the social side of things (I certainly did). But at the end of the AO, Gandalf, Academic Actuary, Abe W., and Dave R from TIA were the most active people answering posts in the exams section, and other than Abe, all of those people are posting here, albeit some under other user names. I think a big part of the issue there is that TIA and CA both have their own discussion forums that are hyper-linked from practice problems, so if you have a question on a problem you can click a link and see old discussions of that exact problem. No external discussion forum can replicate that.
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Hmm, i thought we were just speculating about the average age. This calls for a pollā¦
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I agree with the premise, but disagree that this is a big part of what people are doing. I donāt expect that āmostā exam writers are using TIA/CA. I expect thereās a metric crapton of students not paying for those services. Source: posterior extraction method.
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Hmm, most everyone i know uses TIA, but my sample is biased, of course, by knowing a lot of students at the same employer.
well, so far, no actuarial students. But the distribution is younger than I would have guessed. Not looking over 55 at all.
Maybe the retirees post later.
Also, crap, I missed āI used to do actuarial work but never got credentialedā. Oh well, at least I included an āotherā category.
Battle Acts and Rising Fellow also have forums. I do not know what people use on the SOA side but these 4 cover almost every person writing CAS (upper) exams.
I suppose in theory we could forum post-weight the survey resultsā¦
Weād need a new survey for that. This one is anonymous.
Fair enough. I donāt know the actual distribution of people that pay for exam assistance vs. those that donāt. I assumed thereās lots that donāt pay, but eh, Iāve nothing to base that on.
And, I guess I donāt really care. If the students are getting readily available help elsewhere then probably nobody is particularly motivated to try combine that traffic. In fact, if that assistance IS out there, itās a good motivation for me/us to not bother doing anything extra. Itās just further confirmation that this is a community website that we run as a hobby and no need for it to be anything but. People are happy, being social, thatās everything we need to have.
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It would be good to have a source for new members, though.
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Itās an underrated method, imo
I would guess that many/most college students arenāt paying, while those who are taking exams while working are very likely to pay - or rather, their employers pay. But I donāt have data or anything either.
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I, too, am under 50, so I guess I also bring the average down.
Is that the 2 ply or the 3 ply method?
After a couple calls to the plumber weāre a strictly 1 ply household
I recall, back in the day, when 100 & 110 were given thrice a year. I took the November exam for 110 & failed spectacularly. I had a phone interview with some crusty old actuary and he was beside himself that I didnāt immediately sign up for and take the February exam. As I recall those exams were ~$1200 each sitting. I didnāt have a patreon to fund my exam habit and had quite a gap to make up in order to pass. I was then beside myself that he was beside himself over this.
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