How to go about studying for exam 2?

Exams - Study Groups and Discussion iCAS
1

I don’t think i’ve seen this fully hashed out anywhere yet, so i’m going to put my cards on the table here.

How does one properly study for exam 2?

The current syllabus is here, yes from 2020

And it’s not really clear to me how to prepare for the exam itself.

I’ve been able to piece together that the exam is 3 hours, and iCAS recommends approx 250-300 hours of study.

Now, some elements of the syllabus are straightforward, like for assignment 7, the way to prepare is to study Peng Chapters 3-17. However, others are far less clear. For example the CRISP-DM paper is necessary for assignment 13, but it’s not clear if you should read the whole paper or just a subset. the syllabus indicates “Apply the CRISP-DM framework to the process of planning
out a predictive analytics project” but do i need to read the whole paper to know how to do that?

So for these Assignments it’s more understandable

  • Assignment 7 (have working knowledge of the Peng text, chapters 3-17)
  • Assignment 8 (have working knowledge of Chapter 2 of the Cleveland text)
  • Assignment 9 (have working knowledge of Chapters 1 - 8 of the Healy text(stop at 6.4 in chapter 6)
  • Assignment 10(have working knowledge of the Gellmen and Unwin paper)
  • Assignment 11(have working knowledge of the Few paper, which is unlinked, and looks like a 2 page pdf? )
  • Assignment 13(have a working knowledge of the CRISP-DM paper, but not clear if certain sections or the entire thing)
  • Assignment 14(have working knowledge of Chapters 6 and 9 of O’neil, the Loukides text, and the Wattenberg text )

What’s not clear is what you should study, to prepare for

  • Assignment 1
  • Assignment 2
  • Assignment 3
  • Assignment 4
  • Assignment 5
  • Assignment 6
  • Assignment 12

What’s also unclear, perhaps i missed it in my research, is if there are sample problems. Are there anywhere? Do you just do the readings, practice in whatever softwares, and hope you are ready when it’s time to take the exam?

For resources, there is also the errata and extra info on some of the texts and minimal ‘how-to-R’

So again, for the assignments 1-6 and 12, what do you read ? Are there practice exams or problems in the ether somewhere? I didn’t see any exam material from the infinite actuary, coaching actuaries, actex, or ASM.

Till all are one,

Epistemus

2

Have you studied for a CAS actuarial exam?

You might look through the ACAS material that is related to this material:
Property & Casualty Predictive Analytics (PCPA) | Casualty Actuarial Society

3

And you’re very likely to not see any 3rd party manuals as this is a rather niche exam in the general context of things.

Put another way, the volume of demand for such tools is not great enough for current 3rd party CAS Exam training companies to devote much time for this program specifically, but you might find something related to the ACAS material linked above.

4

I have passed CAS exams. And there were two texts that overlapped in both syllabi, but that was it.

Thanks

5

Ok, I see what you’re getting at with the syllabus material & readings.

It appears that there is a missing reference given that there is an explicit heading before Assignment 7 of “External Readings – Exploratory Data Analysis”.

I’d write to the iCAS and ask your question. I’ve done that in the past and will usually get an answer within a business day or two (in some cases, the same day!).

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