While completing practice questions at home, I frequently find myself searching through the reference sheet using CTRL-F to quickly find the appropriate distribution for a given question.
Will such functionality be available during the actual exam?
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I’ve read somewhere that the answer to that question is no, but I don’t have first hand experience.
So likely you shouldn’t count on it.
If you want speed-ups, spend the $72 on Jim Daniels STAM seminar series pdf’s. I’ve just started going through it and already seen some time saving tips. Stuff like ‘for this section of the text, they only ever use these three distributions on exams. Given any one of those three distributions, here’s how to solve them quickly, without going through all the normal mechanics’.
You’ve also tagged the thread as ao-fan, probably by mistake.
Thanks for the response. I’ll consider going the Jim Daniels route for optimizations.
Fixed the thread tag. Not sure how that happened.
How long did it take for Jim to drop box you the documents?
I purchased them this morning and was hoping to read his summary on Bayesian credibility over lunch.
I bought it at like 10oclock at night, and he responded almost immediately. However he’s in California I think, so may not even be awake yet.
I started on his credibility section. It’s great.
I’m glad to hear that his credibility notes are helping you! Bayesian credibility is my worst topic and left me in tears the first time I tried
practice problems. The link just came in my inbox. I’m very excited about these, Jim seems to have a great reputation online from the reviews I could find. I’m currently using TIA and slam dunking about 70% of all problems on the first try, with a little to no assistance from my notes and formula sheet. I’m having trouble recognizing how to solve the last 30% of problems that aren’t exactly straightforward. I’m hoping these give more context and close that gap.
The whole program? Do they have a question/exam-only option? I was thinking about getting adapt from CA but if TIA has an option for sample questions without the whole course I would cnsider that.
They unfortunately don’t have a package for only practice problems. I’m a huge proponent of the TIA seminars, if you’re thinking of trying their service in the future. The video lessons are pretty good, and the practice problems, if I had to compare to CA, I think average between earned level 4-6. There aren’t too many easy questions and they generally avoid hard questions. So you could use TIA alone and be adequately prepared. They do have 5 practice exams available to take.
I’m going to get 60 day ADAPT in addition to TIA the end of this week, just because I like the option of spamming exams, and CA undoubtedly has a better format/algorithm for that.
So what’s your thoughts now that you’ve been through his credibility stuff?
He seems to know what types of questions they ask, which seem to be different than when I took the material in class. Like, in the aggregate claims section he describes a handful of types of questions, none of which were ones I’d have thought of, and not much like the way it was tested in class. But he does continually refernence ‘this is what they ask’ or ‘they’ve never asked this’.
My intention is to learn his problem types and how to solve them, then hammer time with questions using adapt. That leaves out some stuff in the material I think, so we’ll see how that goes. (for example, PGF’s are in the material but I haven’s seen MGF’s in there. Maybe they don’t actually test MGF’s? Or we don’t need it if we have PGF’s?).
I’m reading through the Bayesian credibility section now and I’ll report back tomorrow. I ended up working until 6 and then spent w couple of hours mastering some other sections.
On another note, you didn’t mention actually using a seminar, so you’re solely relying on his summary notes and previous class experience? How’s that working out for you? Do you feel like it’s enough?
I’m pretty out of touch with what an exam looks like, so I don’t have a good feel for this yet.
I did know the material some time ago from class and I’ve just gone through the text and credibility stuff once through as a general refresher. Just reading and making some notes, nowhere near enough retained to do a problem. I think once I’m done Jim’s stuff (I’m going through it section by section now, I’ve done 1-5 and 15-18) I’ll get adapt and start working problems. That’s when I’ll actually have a glimmering of an idea as to whether I’m prepared. Hopefully start working problems in a few weeks. that gives me january to just do questions and firm up my weak spots.
Reporting back on my experience. I do think Jim’s summaries helped better my understanding of what the questions are asking and how to solve the problem, but I would not recommend them as a stand-alone for learning the material. I was able to answer some questions, but still struggled with more complex problems. His Bayesian credibility summary doesn’t cover how to solve problems that aren’t conjugate priors which was what I was looking for. I didn’t read the other credibility summaries since I’m not struggling with those topics. I will probably go back and read some of his other summaries on topics I’m having trouble with but I’m not sure it was worth the $72 yet.
There’s absolutely stuff not covered. Question is, is it not covered but should be, or is it not covered because they don’t test it? That’s what is like to know.
For example, in class we did a lot of work around identifying the distribution of aggregate claims. The material doesnt touch on that, it goes into other things.