Im taking a course on problem solving right now. It seems to be mostly basic techniques and general principles then lots of practice problems and hoping for the best.
I.e. Some problems work well with diagrams. Others trying test cases then looking for a pattern. Problems where the solution required isnt in the same units as whats given, but relationships exist, use algebra.
are you “solving problems” or “working exercises”? There’s a big difference.
Solving Problems is a bunch of let’s try something and see if it works, maybe it doesn’t get us there so we need to iterate and get a little bit closer a thousand times. Working Exercises is “you multiply the ones by the ones, then the tens by the tens, then the hundreds by the hundreds…”.
Most of what is taught in school is Working Exercises, rather than Solving Problems, so if you’re trying to Solve Problems, the algorithm would be:
Write down the problem
Gather a bunch of ideas
Figure out why each one wouldn’t work
Gather a bunch more ideas
Break for lunch
Randomly assign 3 groups to work on each of 3 separate ideas
Come back 2 weeks later to see if any of the 3 groups have any progress
Get margaritas, because Solving Problems is thirsty work
give up
read Wikipedia
Realize Wikipedia was close, but not quite there, so you just need a hackday to figure it out
organize a hack day, inviting a hundred of your “closest” friends
pay $15,000 to rent the hotel conference rooms for the hackday
split them into several groups, one focused on marketing, one on admin, and one on where to get lunch
wrap up the hack day having not solved your problem
edit Wikipedia for hours delineating how your problem is different than what everyone else says
wake up in the middle of the night with two lines of code that will solve the problem; scribble them in your dream journal, hoping to decipher them in the morning
wake up, look at the dream journal, and remember that after you chicken-scratched those, you dreamed that the code spawned itself out of your dream and swallowed you whole
end up in an asylum, rocking, holding your knees, mindlessly repeating Can’t sleep, code’ll eat me, can’t sleep, code’ll eat me, can’t sleep, code’ll eat me
From final jeopardy recently, category Geography Mnemonics “MIMAL, sometimes said to be the silhouette of a chef or elf, stands for Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, these 2 states”
Spoiler, in case someone saves them on tape (as we do) and hasn’t watched that one yet:
spoilertext
Two contestants said “Alabama and Louisiana” OK, but not very good since map would not be contiguous".
The person who won, not the defending champ, didn’t even include an A state. Louisiana and Kentucky, or maybe Louisiana and Tennessee. I tried to google but couldn’t easily determine which he used.
I am new to actuary world and I need to calculate the claim reserves for a project I have been assigned to. Can anyone here help me? how should I calculate reserves? Any methods? frameworks?
Or, bot.
Poster doesn’t have a boss to ask these questions? Haven’t the reserves been estimated before today? Please bots, work harder. Turing Test fail.
I still miss the motivation (and am not completely in the bot camp). If someone wanted info on how to reserve, what does he gain by using a chatgpt bot?
Google apparently didn’t work well enough, so ask here.
Now, why not ask in one’s own voice? Probably because they are NOT new to “actuary world,” and they want (for some reason which escapes me) to know how to calculate reserves. Or, perhaps how others calculate reserves so they can check their work.
Or, just to fuck with us, to see if they can fool us into answering a bot. Like a Turing Test.
or, and this is giving the generous benefit of the doubt, the poster is a new college student who’s been assigned a project to understand how insurance works, has no intention of picking up actuarial science, and has been told “determine a reserve for this insurance policy”, so they Googled and followed the most appropriate link.