Puneet Nayyar

Fun

2008-11-17T16:29:46Z

Strawberry n Cream

2007-01-25T16:59:06Z

The white stuff is whipped cream... had it after lunch and dinner on all days during my stay at Mahabaleshwar

Guru (2007)

2007-01-12T19:53:56Z

Watched a movie on the first day of release after a long time. Couldn’t help myself but review it for the two people who visit this page.

First things first. It is Dhirubhai’s life story. A bit changed here and there but it involves a village born uneducated youth, his foreign trip, his polyester mills, opposition by a parsi business family to his business, a paralysis attack and his wife and two children behind him at the shareholder meets (a la warrior brothers in 80s). It also shows the corruption endorsed by the man to get his way around in the license raj. However, adequate sugar coating is applied in the end to appease all parties.

About the movie and direction – Movie is very gripping in parts but songs often obstruct the flow. On hearing the album, it seemed that the movie had just a handful of songs (the music company gave a free disc to make up for the lack of songs) but these were enough to ruin the movie. The songs are thrown in abruptly and irritate the viewers. Even the actors in these songs are listless and look like they were forced to perform. How many times have you seen an actress stand in front of a waterfall on the top of a big rock and dance? Even the masti of Bhapi da’s bhang number is lost on screen. More about this later. Except the placement of songs and missing a few details (rear defogger in a 80s car!!), Mani sir does fine. However at times it looks like that some parts of the movie have been chopped off to fit the movie in the three-hour show time.

Rajeev Menon disappoints. To me, he is the king cinematographer. He can make barren landscapes look beautiful. In this movie he had a lot of scope. He had Turkey, a beautiful village, Bombay in 80’s to show, but he disappoints. All he does is move the camera up and down. There is a scene where camera moves up in the frame and for a fraction of a second you can see the sun in the camera. The steam of the engine wets the lens once. The biggest letdown to me was the village temple. It was in a cave of a mountain with a lake on the side. A lot of shots were in front of the cave overlooking the lake but never once Menon could capture the beauty of both the cave and lake in one frame. Perhaps this was the place where he needed a higher angle!

The actors – Mani tries to capture the Roja magic with Aishwarya Rai. Same locale, similar character and with the similar song for the entry - the village lass singing at the village waterfall. She fails when compared to Madhu. Aish gives the feeling that she is being made to do this against her wishes. She tries to show emotions but nothing comes out. Although she improves as the movie goes on.
It could have been Abhishek Bachchan’s movie. He is there in every frame of the movie. In the first half he is fantastic. All the scenes come naturally to him. Just before the second half starts, it seems that the ghost of Vijay Dinanath Chouhan came and bit his brains off. From that point onwards, small B copies the big B shamelessly. The droopy lips are formed, the hand is rested on the side of the waist and every dialogue has a ‘haih’ in it. Not that he has done it badly. He has done a fine job copying his dad but misses out on the scope to do something original and perhaps something big.
He has gained a lot of weight to portray the middle age businessman and he makes sure that the viewers get to know that the weight has been gained and it is not the padding by going topless and showing off his paunch. So much for showoff. No subtleties involved.
Mithun da shines. He has a significant role and he portrays it magnificently. Shows us glimpses of the actor that he once was. He easily outshines all other actors in the film.
Vidya Balan has been wasted. She plays the insignificant character that has been created just to tie all the main characters together. She is adequate in whatever she has been made to do. Madhavan has a small role and most of his screen space is shared with Mithun. I was so overawed by Mithun that I hardly noticed Madhavan in those scenes. The rest of the support cast is good, especially Manoj Joshi as the faithful friend. He has been growing as an actor since Sarfarosh and hopefully will get more significant roles soon. Just a word about the child actor that plays Abhishek Bachchan. He looks nothing like what small B would have looked when he was a child and moreover that boy lacks the energy that Abhishek brings on the screen. A very very poor choice. Bring over Mayur’s son J.

The music is good. Rehman does the usual and impresses again. Maybe Gulzar can get a little less aka Galib and make the lyrics more coherent. For a moment I thought that PK Mishra is back.

Overall, a larger than life story, well told. Mani Ratnam is known for making good films and this one was meant to be a movie that inspires the viewers, and at some level, it does. Definitely a once watch. The movie would be known for Abhishek Bachchan’s missed opportunity and Mithun da’s comeback.
Rating-6.5/10

Trip to places around Bombay

2007-01-11T15:35:43Z

And more pics..

Sreesanths Reply

2006-12-20T05:41:19Z

If you haven't seen this....

Indian Superman

2006-10-25T08:07:43Z

Just didn't want Indian MJ to be left alone, so here comes the Indian superman with... ahem.. spideygirl!!

Indian Thriller

2006-10-25T07:40:21Z

Another of those Actuarial Fiction stories..

2006-08-15T06:43:23Z

NEVER WRONG

Marnie Alexis Friedman

“Again? Howie, no, really, I don’t think that’s right.”

“Of course it is, Miranda. It was a unanimous decision.”

“Howie, it’s been me for four years running. Surely there’s one other person at the company who’s made some bit of difference.”

“Everyone else’s job is pure rote, nowadays. Sure, some of the members of the actuarial team are still calculating weighted-average rates for ‘just-in-case’ scenarios, but that work has been entirely theoretical, because your model is never wrong. Face it – your work is the most significant thing this company – this industry – has ever seen.”

“But I didn’t do anything this year. The first year, sure, I guess I deserved it; that’s when

I built the model. But since then, all I’ve done is tweak it a little, optimize things, automate a bit more. Nothing substantive.”

“Miranda, the decision is final. You are the 2021 Employee of the Year, whether you like it or not.”

* * *

“So…would you mind? He really wants to meet you – you’re like a rock star to him.

He’s the only kid I know who said he wanted to be an actuary from the time he was six years old.”

She choked back a snort, remembering how actuarial work had been her last choice, a field she’d chosen only when it became clear that her ailing parents would need more monetary support than the meager stipend offered to graduate students. “Of course. I’d be delighted. Let me know what’s a convenient day.”

“Umm…well, he’s…he’s actually here right now,” Drew stammered.

She paused. “Well then, come on over. I’ve got a meeting in an hour, but nothing pressing till then.”

“Great! Thanks! Really, thanks.”

A few minutes later, Drew and his son appeared in the doorway of her office. She rose to greet them. “Hi, come on in, I’m Miranda Stayton.”

“Miranda, this is my son Andrew.”

“Andy,” corrected the young man. He shook her hand. “It’s, like, really great to meet you.”

“Thanks,” she answered, sitting down and gesturing to him to do the same. “I understand you’re majoring in actuarial studies?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Which pretty much means I’m majoring in ‘Miranda Stayton’s Amazing Model.’ Of course, it’s all proprietary so we can’t analyze it at all, but mostly we talk about how it’s changed everything for actuaries.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “But you’re still covering the basics, right? Life Contingencies, Theory of Interest…”

“Oh, yeah, sure. But they told us we’ll only need it if we work for one of Duckrene Life’s competitors.” He laughed. “But your only competitors are the companies you don’t want to buy, right? So it’s, like, hardly worth learning.” He noticed her expression and anticipated the interruption she was about to make. “No, no, I’m totally learning it. Gotta pass the exams, right? But I mean, that’s all it’s for. I’m out in two years, and hopefully Duckrene’ll hire me straight outta school.”

She nodded, smiled briefly. “Good luck to you. You know we won’t hire actuarial students who haven’t demonstrated exam success. But we also won’t hire people without a firm understanding of the material on exams they’ve already passed. After all, we’re constantly refining the model. Can’t update mortality assumptions without understanding joint life probabilities, right?”

He grinned. “Alright, I’ll start paying better attention. But can I ask you one question?”

She restrained herself from pointing out that he already had. “Certainly.”

“I’ve been wondering about this a lot…Me and my friends have talked about it a little, but when we asked the professor he said he didn’t, like, waste time on impossible questions. But I was wondering…”

“Yes?” she prompted, knowing what would come next as he trailed off.

“Well…I was wondering, what happens if your model is ever wrong?”

“Andy!” Drew cut in angrily. “Her model is never wrong.” He glanced at Miranda apologetically. “Sorry…kids, you know?”

“But I’ve heard it was off by a few days a few different times!”

“Andy!”

“It’s alright, Drew,” she said. “Three times. Three times, the model has been off by one day.”

“Isn’t that, like, bad?” He was clearly nervous, but his relief upon asking the question that had been plaguing him was evident.

She smiled, reassuring him. “Having the model off by one day throws off my actual-to expected ratios in the eighth or ninth decimal place. We only track six decimals. So no, I don’t think a few anomalous results are so bad. Mortality never used to be measured out to the day, anyway – that’s only been possible because the PIDs transmit a signal directly to our databases upon the death of their owners. You’ve heard of IBNR, claims ‘incurred but not reported,’ right?”

Andy nodded.

“But you’ve only heard that in the context of health claims. There are no more IBNR life insurance claims, because the Personal IDs report death as soon as it’s…‘incurred.’ But Andy, to answer your question – if the model ever turns out to be wrong, we’ll fix it. That’s all. That’s why it’s so important to remember all the material from the exams – the only way to fix the model is to understand where it went wrong, and you can’t do that without a firm background in all the material.”

Andy nodded, apparently placated. Miranda could see him formulating another question, the logical follow-up, but then he glanced at his father and apparently thought better of it. “Thanks,” was all he said. “I don’t want to bother you too much; it was really nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you, too,” she said, standing up and shaking his hand again. “Good luck with your studies. I’ll look for your name on the pass lists.”

“Thanks again, Miranda,” said Drew, propelling his son out of the office.

Miranda sat down again at her desk, thinking of the three heart-stopping moments Andy’s question had recalled to the forefront of her memory.

Betsy Coble, languishing in the cancer ward of a top-rated hospital, her 56-year-old body not quite as feeble as the model had projected it to be. Adrian White, lawyer by day, dare-devil motorcyclist by night, whose luck had held out longer than the model predicted. Nathan

Reynolds, a nondescript man in a nondescript job whose life was notable only in that its length defied the model.

Each of them had caused her stomach to churn and her palms to sweat, had forced her home early with an excruciating migraine. And each died by the end of the day following the model’s projected date of death. Betsy had faded away painlessly as she slept. Adrian’s notorious lack of attention to detail in his nightlife meant that it came as no surprise that his brakes, the pads nearly worn away, had failed at a critical moment.

And Nathan was found in his nondescript bed, suffocated, presumably by a nondescript burglar who’d taken a nondescript television.

Miranda could hear Andy’s unasked question: What happens if you can’t fix the model? She pushed the disquieting question and the unsettling memories from her mind, then busied herself preparing for her meeting.

* * *

“Thanks, Tim. Glad to see Marketing’s on track for the new product roll-out. Alright, so that leaves…Actuarial. Miranda?”

“Things are on track. We’ve validated all the assumptions for the new product, and we’ll review actual-to-expected beginning one month after launch.”

There was a slight snicker at the word “assumptions,” and a larger one when she finished speaking.

“Great. And what are the actual-to-expected for the First Pioneer UL? It’s been a year since that launched.”

“Actual-to-expected are one, across the board.”

A few eye-rolls, one appreciative long, low whistle. “Your model’s deadon even for mortality in the Moon colonies?”

“Of course, Chuck,” cut in Toni, a twenty-year company veteran. “The model is never wrong.”

“Yet,” corrected Miranda automatically. “But it could be, and that’s why we’re tracking actual experience.”

“Alright, thanks, Miranda.” Howie regained control of the meeting with the practiced aplomb of a COO. “Anything else?” His direct reports shook their heads, glancing around. “No? Alright, you’re dismissed.

Don’t forget about the Employee of the Year dinner on Thursday.”

* * *

Returning to her office, she began writing her speech for the dinner. She looked over her speeches from previous years, and began with the same platitudes: “I’m so honored, I’m overwhelmed that the model has proven to be so useful to our company, I’m grateful to the members of my department who have improved the model in ways I would never have thought of on my own.” She wondered, briefly, if it sounded stilted always to refer to it as “the model.” On rare occasions, she called it “our model,” but she never, never referred to it as “my model” in front of anyone in the insurance industry, or the media. She hardly used the phrase at all, in fact.

She outlined her speech, focusing, as she had the previous three years, on the value of teamwork and the importance of having a staff unafraid to criticize and correct. Writing somewhat by rote, she was jolted back to her senses when the computer gave a distinctive set of beeps. An alert message popped up on the screen, simply a number: “410136788.”

Toggling her screen over to the always-running terminal for the model, she entered the policy number, adjusting it with her own personal code of adding one to the first digit, two to the second, and so on.

Policy: 533582467

Owner: Burlock, Taylor, Mr.

Address1: 117 Cardinal Circle

Address2: n/a

Address3: Liliorat, MA 02384

DOB: 11/17/1967

PDOD: 12/12/2021

ADOD: n/a

As she’d feared – well, known, based on the distinctive computer beeps – the policyholder’s projected date of death was yesterday, but he wasn’t actually dead yet.

A quick inquiry on the policy documents revealed that the not-yet-late Mr. Burlock was a senior executive at Pharm Phresh, a leading drug manufacturer. Miranda hurriedly Net searched the company, and found that it was in the midst of a battle royale with its leading competitor; each company had accused its rival of corporate espionage. Dirty, underhanded tactics had been used so much in the long-ongoing fight that the NewsNet hardly bothered reporting on it anymore.

* * *

She buzzed her assistant, complained of a migraine, grabbed her purse and briefcase, and left the office. Stepping into her transport, she tapped the “Home” icon and let the craft propel itself through the mild, prerush hour traffic. Minutes later, she walked into her bedroom, took her anti-migraine medication, and hoisted a different black leather briefcase over her shoulder. As she got back in her transport, she switched to “Manual Entry Mode” and typed in the address she’d memorized from the computer screen.

In half an hour, she was approaching the front door of Taylor Burlock’s split-level house. She rang the bell, and a balding man opened the door momentarily, peering at her suspiciously. “Mr. Burlock?” she asked unnecessarily, having verified that he was recently estranged from his wife and lived alone.

“Yes?”

Even as he answered, she was opening the briefcase, closing her hand around the cold metal, pulling it out, aiming it directly between his eyes.

She whispered the words she’d only said aloud three times before.

“My model is never wrong.”

And squeezed the trigger.

Adieu My Friend- Keshav Bahety

2006-08-03T04:14:23Z

1979-2006
I believe in god. I really do. I also used to think that god has a reason for everything. He makes no mistakes. I have changed my opinion. He makes big mistakes. Really big ones. How do you justify a 26 year old going to sleep next to his wife and not waking up in the morning? There is always somebody to blame. The errant truck driver or the irresponsible doctor. Who is to be blamed for this? Just god. Nobody else. He made a mistake and I’m not gonna forgive him soon.

Keshav and me go back a long way. We first met when I was in 7th standard. I was the one who joined school in the middle of year and he being the class topper. Our teacher introduced us. We were friends for the next 14 years. Sharing our lives. All the fun, happiness and sadness.

Everybody I talked to and told about this news, just one thing came to his or her mind. Friend. Keshav could go up to anybody and talk. Make conversations. I think this was the reason that made him popular. I introduced him to my college friends when he was in Delhi for a short time after his engineering. He was in touch with most of them till last week. Nobody called him a friend’s friend. He was a friend. A good friend.

Another thing that I would remember him by was that he never gave a hard thought before doing something. His heart ruled over his mind. Whenever he felt like doing something, he never discussed it with anybody, just went ahead and did it. I used to admire him for that.

Today, when this news is sinking in, I can’t imagine the pain that his wife would be going through. After all that they went through, it had been just 8 months since their marriage.
What his parents would be going through?
Nobody deserves this. This should not happen to anybody. I still blame god for all this. What is he trying to prove by showing me this?

The things that I learned from this would be – Give time to people you love. Tell them you love them. They might not be there tomorrow to hear this.

Don’t work too hard. You work just for the job satisfaction and to earn money. Don’t do it on the expense of your loved ones. Don’t take time out of their time to spend in office.

Think about the future but plan for tomorrow also.

Insure yourself. So that if you are gone people aren’t financially wrecked along with emotionally.

Live your life to fullest. Do whatever that comes to you mind as long as it does not harm others or yourself. This was exactly how Keshav lived his life.

I cannot think you're not alive somewhere.
I think of you just as I did before.
No sudden gust of wind has closed the door
Or made your presence vanish in thin air.
I write you this because I know you're there;
That even after death there must be more.
So does faith one's inner sun restore
After bitter darkness few can bear.
My mind and heart have not yet lost a friend
Even though my senses are bereft,
For you remain the witness of my soul.
No mere accident our love can end
So long as I have will and memory left,
And you lie silent on some unknown shoal.

pun23 @ 2006-07-20T12:59:00

2006-07-20T12:13:38Z

My results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		75%
Iron Man		70%
Green Lantern		60%
Robin		55%
Superman		50%
The Flash		50%
Wonder Woman		48%
Hulk		45%
Batman		35%
Supergirl		28%
Catwoman		25%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

How Much do I earn??

2006-02-13T05:37:42Z

For every rupee I earn, I pay 30 paise as tax (30%). When I take that 70 paise to a retaurant, I can only buy stuff worth 50.4 paise as I have to pay 20% VAT and 10% service charges.

So that means that the can of Guinness that I thought was 350 bucks actually cost me 700 bucks of my earned salary!!!

I took your cherry

2005-12-26T09:33:45Z

What happens when you eat a cherry on top of somebody else’s ice cream and then casually remark: “I took your cherry”.

Do you recognise these boys?

2005-12-07T15:11:34Z

I want the Comic

2005-12-01T12:54:46Z

To get a dead tree comic I am doing this. As you can see, I really really want it.

A friend of me asked these 5 questions long long ago...

The rules:

Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
You'll include this explanation.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

1. During the past few months, major league baseball players were in the process of negotiating with the team owners for higher minimum salaries and more fringe benefits. At the time of the negotiations, most of the major league baseball players had salaries in the $100,000 - $150,000 a year range. However, there were a handful of players who, via the free agent system, earned nearly three million dollars per year. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of the median and mean in describing the 'average' salary.

The handful of players are outliers. The best approach for this analysis would be finding mean, standard deviation and skewness of data. Mean and standard deviation should be found out ignoring the outliers and skewness should be visualised using curve projection. Curve projection can be done with or without the outliers. However the gradient and the main projection area should not be compromised to include outliers.

Mean : Mean is simply the average of the data. The handful of outliers would distort the mean. However this would also depend on the numbers of players in the given range, In case the outliers are less than .5%, mean can be assumed to reasonably represent the given data. However mean as a standalone figure should not be used. Using standard deviation with mean would give us a reasonable estimate of the data.

Median : Median is the middlemost value of a population. In case of this data, median would be reasonable figure if the population was more than 1000. Then the median would ignore the outliers without moving away from the middle of distribution. Median would be useful here when viewed with mode of the frequency for small ranges within the given range.

2. If you were not an actuary, would you have married Ms. Singh?

No. As much my friends might have downplayed her nuisances, I would have got sense knocked into my head somehow. It might have taken some more time though.

3. Would you have married her anyways? huh? huh? huh?

No. As I went further in my Actuarial exams, comparing Assets and Liabilities took the top priority. Now I compare them for a long future term. Sometimes 100 years.
Liabilities at that time were already more than Assets but my actuarial exams would have helped me to compare them for the long term. The Net Present Value figure would have been used in enforcing the decision.
Do I need to say more?

4. Which Hindi Movie comedian do you most identify with?

IS Johar. That deadpan humor is me.

5. Name one person/thing you love with so much passion, it actually hurts.

My Actuarial exam pass certificates. Try touching them sometime, it'll actually hurt :)

I have been a nice boy. Now do I get the comic??

pun23 @ 2005-10-03T15:02:00

2005-10-03T09:30:52Z

Brilliant editorial in this month’s The Actuary magazine.

Get real with equations

There is a disturbing new force at work in our society. More insidious than heroin or those pirate Finding Nemo DVDs which directly fund global terrorism, it threatens to strike at everything we hold dear.

Rogue equations are on the loose.

They began innocently a couple of years ago. Quirky Christmas articles in the Sun on the area of wrapping paper required for a Toblerone and suchlike, but they were one-offs written by desperate professors to feed their starving children and make their Christmas a little less miserable.

But now the malaise seems to be spreading. Recent issues of Cosmopolitan, with formulae for the perfect relationship, the perfect boyfriend, and the perfect career, have contained more maths than The Actuary. That can’t be right. And I have a sneaking suspicion that very little of it is properly peer-reviewed. Or even makes sense.

For instance, the July issue of Company contained a test to measure your boyfriend’s vaginal quotient or ‘VQ’. For the mystified, this is a measure of one’s feminine understanding. At first I was thrilled to discover that I had a high enough VQ without compromising my PQ. But then I began to question the validity of this measure – surely in calculating a quotient one figure has to be divided by another, but the article gave no indication as to what these may be. What about the scale of the measure? I needed more.

Digging a little deeper I turned up a seedy little underworld of backstreet academics trading equations for cash. In the old days, if you were a biscuit company wanting to get your name in the tabloids you had to go to the trouble of commissioning a bogus survey on the nation’s dunking habits. But now you can slip a mathematician a few bob and he’ll scribble down some algebra to find the perfect dunking angle before zipping off in his Lamborghini with a supermodel in the passenger seat. Pow! – instant headline. Of course, the maths doesn’t actually have to make sense. Who’s going to notice?

Dr Cliff Arnall, a health psychologist at Cardiff University, could lay a claim to being the Heidi Fleiss of this secret world. Already this year he has helped firms to find the formulae for the happiest day of the year and the best day to make a resolution. His latest offering is the formula for the perfect long weekend:

(C x R x ZZ)/((Tt + D) x St) + (P x Pr) >400

Where:

Tt = travel time

D = delays

C = time spent on cultural activities

R = time spent relaxing

ZZ = time spent sleeping

St = time spent in a state of stress

P = time spent packing

Pr = time spent in preparation

This is not good maths. For starters, what time units are used? Presumably they are needed to make sense of the threshold of 400 required for a fun time. It is also nonsense dimensionally, with mixed dimensions of T and T2 on the left-hand side. Finally, it implies that an infinitely good time can be had by staying at home and cutting your travel time to zero. Dr Arnall clearly enjoys packing though – perhaps he is a proper mathematician after all.

Trivializing the subject in this way cannot be helpful in the long run. It patronizes the public and can give the impression that public funds are being wasted by universities in such ‘research’. Perhaps it is just a bit of fun but in with falling numbers of students going on to study maths at higher levels we need real champions of the subject.People who can sell the subject as a valued skill which can lead to careers that are both personally lucrative and of benefit to our economy. There is much talk of actuarial involvement in raising the level of financial awareness among the public, and as the high priests of maths we are best placed to showcase the subject as the key to a successful and rewarding career.

In the meantime, I am pleased to announce the founding of the Campaign for Real Equations. CAMRE will be a haven for like-minded individuals to grow beards, wear sandals, and extol the virtues of old-fashioned equations, identities, and functions. There will also be an annual CAMRE guide, listing places where one can be assured of equations of utmost quality, which will definitely feature The Actuary. And possibly Cosmopolitan, if it finally manages to come up with a proper formula for the perfect girl’s night in.

_ TRISTAN WALKER-BUCKTON

pun23 @ 2005-09-13T15:03:00

2005-09-13T09:35:01Z

Really, Really Weird Shit

Age:11 Months

Weight: 22.5kg

Per Day Diet: 1 kg Rice and 5 liter Milk

Birth Place: India-Rajasthan

pun23 @ 2005-08-31T14:23:00

2005-08-31T08:52:31Z

If you come to this page and wonder why I don't update my blog, here is the reason :

On completion of this subject the trainee actuary will be able to:
(i) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different measures of investment risk.
1. Define the following measures of investment risk:
      variance of return
      downside semi-variance of return
      shortfall probabilities
      Value at Risk (VaR) / Tail VaR
2. Describe how the risk measures listed in (i) 1. above are related to the form of an investor's utility function.
3. Perform calculations using the risk measures listed above to compare investment opportunities.
4. Explain how the distribution of returns and the thickness of tails will influence the assessment of risk.
(ii) Describe and discuss the assumptions of mean-variance portfolio theory and its principal results.
1. Describe and discuss the assumptions of mean-variance portfolio theory.
2. Discuss the conditions under which application of mean-variance portfolio theory leads to the selection of an optimum portfolio.
3. Calculate the expected return and risk of a portfolio of many risky assets, given the expected return, variance and covariance of returns of the individual assets, using mean-variance portfolio theory.
4. Explain the benefits of diversification using mean-variance portfolio theory.
5. Explain what is meant by: opportunity set, efficient frontier, indifference curves and the optimum portfolio, in the context of mean-variance portfolio theory.
(iii) Describe and discuss the properties of single and multifactor models of asset returns.
1. Describe the three types of multifactor models of asset returns:
macroeconomic models
fundamental factor models
statistical factor models
2. Discuss the single index model of asset returns.
3. Discuss the concepts of diversifiable and non-diversifiable risk.
4. Discuss the construction of the different types of multifactor models.
5. Perform calculations using both single and multi-factor models
(iv) Describe asset pricing models, discussing the principal results and assumptions and limitations of such models.
1. Describe the assumptions and the principal results of the Sharpe-Lintner-Mossin Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).
2. Discuss the limitations of the basic CAPM and some of the attempts that have been made to develop the theory to overcome these limitations.
3. Discuss the assumptions, principal results and limitations of the Ross Arbitrage Pricing Theory model (APT).
4. Perform calculations using the CAPM.
(v) Discuss the various forms of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and discuss the evidence for and against the hypothesis.
1. Discuss the three forms of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and their consequences for investment management.
2. Describe briefly the evidence for or against each form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
(vi) Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of stochastic models of the behaviour of security prices.
1. Discuss the continuous time log-normal model of security prices and the empirical evidence for or against the model.
2. Discuss the structure of auto-regressive models of security prices and other economic variables, such as the Wilkie model, and describe the economic justification for such models.
3. Discuss the main alternatives to the models covered in (vi) 1. and (vi) 2. above and describe their strengths and weaknesses.
4. Perform simple calculations involving the models described above.
5. Discuss the main issues involved in estimating parameters for asset pricing models:
data availability
data errors
outliers
stationarity of underlying time series
the role of economic judgement
(vii) Define and apply the main concepts of Brownian motion (or Wiener Processes).
1. Explain the definition and basic properties of standard Brownian motion or Wiener process.
2. Demonstrate a basic understanding of stochastic differential equations, the Ito integral, diffusion and nean-reverting processes.
3. State Ito s formula and be able to apply it to simple problems.
4. Write down the stochastic differential equation for geometric Brownian motion and show how to find its solution.
5. Write down the stochastic differential equation for the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and show how to find its solution.
(viii) Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the properties of option prices, valuation methods and hedging techniques.
1. State what is meant by arbitrage and a complete market.
2. Outline the factors that affect option prices.
3. Derive specific results for options which are not model dependent:
Show how to value a forward contract.
Develop upper and lower bounds for European and American call and put options.
Explain what is meant by put-call parity.
4. Show how to use binomial trees and lattices in valuing options and solve simple examples.
5. Derive the risk-neutral pricing measure for a binomial lattice and describe the riskneutral pricing approach to the pricing of equity options.
6. Explain the difference between the real-world measure and the risk-neutral measure. Explain why the risk-neutral pricing approach is seen as a computational tool (rather than a realistic representation of price dynamics in the real world).
7. State the alternative names for the risk-neutral and state-price deflator approaches to pricing.
8. Demonstrate an understanding of the Black-Scholes derivative-pricing model:
Explain what is meant by a complete market.
Explain what is meant by risk-neutral pricing and the equivalent martingale measure.
Derive the Black-Scholes partial differential equation both in its basic and Garman- Kohlhagen forms.
Demonstrate how to price and hedge a simple derivative contract using the martingale approach.
9. Show how to use the Black-Scholes model in valuing options and solve simple examples.
10. Discuss the validity of the assumptions underlying the Black-Scholes model.
11. Describe and apply in simple models, including the binomial model and the Black-Scholes model, the approach to pricing using deflators and demonstrate its equivalence to the risk-neutral pricing approach.
12. Demonstrate an awareness of the commonly used terminology for the first, and where appropriate second, partial derivatives (the Greeks) of an option price.
13. Describe how the Greeks are used in the risk management of a portfolio of derivatives.
14. Derive the partial derivatives described above for Black-Scholes European option prices and describe their general characteristics.
15. Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of delta-hedging and show how to apply it.
(ix) Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of models of the term structure of interest rates.
1. Describe the desirable characteristics of a model for the term-structure of interest rates.
2. Describe, as a computational tool, the risk-neutral approach to the pricing of zerocoupon bonds and interest-rate derivatives for a general one-factor diffusion model for the risk-free rate of interest.
3. Describe, as a computational tool, the approach using state-price deflators to the pricing of zero-coupon bonds and interest-rate derivatives for a general one-factor diffusion model for the risk-free rate of interest.
4. Demonstrate an awareness of the Vasicek, Cox-Ingersoll-Ross and Hull-White models for the term-structure of interest rates.
5. Discuss the limitations of these one-factor models and show an awareness of how these issues can be addressed.
       End of Syllabus

End Result : 34 students appeared and 4 passed. Your grade was FA (1% to 5% below passing marks).

Yeah, I know. Shit Happens!!!

pun23 @ 2005-06-04T12:14:00

2005-06-04T06:46:23Z

Your Birthdate: June 23

With a birthday on the 23rd of the month (5 energy) you are inclined to work well with people and enjoy them.

You are talented and versatile, very good at presenting ideas.

You may have a tendency to get itchy feet at times and need change and travel.

You tend to be very progressive, imaginative and adaptable.

Your mind is quick, clever and analytical.

A restlessness in your nature may make you a bit impatient and easily bored with routine.

You may have a tendency to shirk responsibility.

Very sociable, you make friends easily and you are an excellent traveling companion.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

An Excellent Article

2005-04-21T08:24:42Z

An Excellent Article published in this month's The Actuary magazine.

Batting on a statisticky wicket</font>

Jurie Nel puts forward a classification scheme for the consistency of cricket batsmen.

When a cricketer goes out to bat, his career statistics are shown on the television screen. The most important figure quoted is his average score, but nothing is indicated about his consistency. This information, however, should be of considerable interest to the viewer. In this article I shall explain why.

Tossing up</font>
The standard deviation is a good measure of consistency, but in itself it is not useful for comparing players of different abilities. If you averaged 100, for example, your standard deviation would naturally be higher than for someone who averaged 5. Therefore, we need to ‘normalise’ the standard deviation by dividing through by the average score: We calculated a consistency coefficient (CC) statistic for 200 international cricket players using data up to 14 February 2005. In recognition of the notion that bigger is better, we defined the CC as the inverse of the above ratio (so that more consistent players had a higher CC statistic) and we also introduced a slight variation in order to handle any not-out scores. We then allocated cricketers to different classes, both for one-day international (ODI) matches and for test matches, as shown in table 1 above. We then plotted 10 different players’ averages (y-axis) against their CCs (x-axis) – for both ODI and test cricket, as shown in figures 1 and 2.

A declaration</font>
The ODI graph indicates that in one-day cricket, Herschelle Gibbs averages second-lowest of the ten players analysed, with very low consistency around his average. Seeing that he is inconsistent around his average of 35, if may be inferred that he is more likely to produce a score much higher than his average. So in this sense, his inconsistency could be considered a virtue! The above reasoning can also be applied to the selection of players with low averages. As a captain, I might find myself favouring a batsman who scored 10 on average, but with frequent low scores and occasional very high scores, over a batsman who scored consistently 10 every time he played.

Drawing stumps
The CC serves as an additional statistic by which to compare batsmen. In particular, it is very useful when used in conjunction with the average score. With the advances in cricket statistics shown on television screens, the CC may be appropriate for use in cricket broadcasts. It would definitely give cricket fans something else to discuss in postmatch debates in the pavilion.

pun23 @ 2004-11-16T10:35:00

2004-11-16T05:15:09Z

The lazy guy has got up and prepared a quiz.

Check it out here

http://www.livejournal.com/community/quizbusters/20036.html?mode=reply

Try This

2004-08-18T16:02:56Z

Your life in F1 by Beuchi
Name
Your favourite driver is...
Your favourite team is...	Sauber
You will sign with...	Jordan
Will you win the championship?	No

Quiz created with MemeGen!

The most mentally ill job resume

2004-08-04T13:16:17Z

This is what I saw at a site.

In the summer of 1992, I was working a Saturday afternoon at the bar when a guy walked in and handed me this resume. He seemed to be on a serious job hunt, because he had a lot of them. I just took it, said we weren't hiring right now, and he left. The first thing I noticed was that it was ten pages long, about nine more than a resume should be. Then I started reading it. All I can say is, when you think you've met the most whacked out fuck-job that God could possibly make, in comes ol' Joseph E. Evans. I can't imagine this was some elaborate joke. The best part is, I don't think he was finished. The last page just seems to drift off. This is the ultimate paranoid conspiracy piece I've ever read. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent, because God protects the innocent as a matter of his heavenly duties (apologies to Vonnegut). Anyway, I scanned the original resume he handed me, because to re-enter it in the computer by typing would lose the whole essence of this piece of... something. You have to read it. Click each link below to read the corresponding page. On some pages, the scanner chopped off the top and bottom line, so I had to type them in. Since posting this, I have had two people tell me that they received the same thing from Joseph E. Evans at around the same time (summer '92). Apparently, he got around. WARNING: It DOES tend to get a bit much. After the first couple of pages, it just turns to babble. However, for posterity's sake, I have included the entire document. I like to be thorough. My question to you is: would you hire him? Other Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Citizen Kane and Raj Kapoor

2004-08-03T06:10:30Z

Yesterday Night I watched Citizen Kane. The movie was made in 1941. Multimillionaire newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies alone in his extravagant mansion, Xanadu, speaking a single word: "Rosebud". In an attempt to figure out the meaning of this word, a reporter tracks down the people who worked and lived with Kane; they tell their stories in a series of flashbacks that reveal much about Kane's life but not enough to unlock the riddle of his dying breath.

The movie reminded me of early Raj Kapoor movies like Aah, Aag and Awara. The storyline was very similar. Although Citizen Kane was not as great as Jaagte Raho, I still saw similarity to Raj Kapoor style of film making. The point worth noting is that Aag and Aah came in late 1940's and early 1950's while Citizen Kane and Meet John Doe started a trend in Hollywood of similar movies at the same time.

We always thought that 'the actor' Raj Kapoor was influenced by Charlie Chaplin. Maybe 'the director' Raj Kapoor shared mutual admiration for western directors like Orson Welles. It is worth noting that Orson Welles acted in most of the movies he directed, just like our own RK.

Actuarial Fiction

2004-07-22T06:05:46Z

1 1=0
By Jerry Tuttle, FCAS

</font>

(The events and persons in this story are fictional. Any resemblance to real people is
purely unintentional.)


The miniskirted waitress brought two more beers to the table. She leaned over as she placed each beer bottle on the table, inviting the two male patrons a teasing look down the top of her blouse. She flipped her blonde hair, batted her long eyelashes, and flashed a big smile through her shiny red lipstick. Each of these gestures was designed to elicit a greater than average tip from the two considerably drunk young men. She did not understand that the two men were actuaries who could easily estimate a 15% tip to within a couple of pennies, no matter how drunk or distracted they were.


“To my fellow Fellow,” toasted Stanley Wu to his friend Ed Kochowski, surveying
the long row of empty beer bottles, and clearly pleased with himself for what he
thought was a clever toast. Ed clinked beer bottles with his old friend. Ed and Stanley had
just gotten their actuarial exam results, and with this, their final exam, they would be
inducted as Fellows at the next Society meeting.


“It has certainly been a long road to Fellowship,” mused Ed. “Partial exams,
new exam structures, transition rules, nation specific exams. So many boring books
and articles to read for each exam. Plus no matter how much they think they ask
thoughtful questions, there were always those damned trivia questions. These should
have been the best years of our lives - in our twenties, single, making good money -
and instead we spent these years studying for the exams.”


“I think the Society owes us, big time,” Stanley replied. “The Fellowship bonus
our company pays us does not make up for what the Society put us through. I want to
find some way of really being a pain in the ass to the Society.”


“So what do you want to do?” Ed asked. “Hack into the Society’s computer?”


“I think that’s been done before,” Stanley said. “Do you remember a couple of
years ago someone did that and switched all the exam results around? It took them
months to resolve all the student complaints. That was pretty funny - until we
realized it affected our exams too.”


“Well, I don’t really want to do anything that messes things up for other
students. But it would be sort of fun to play with their heads at the Society,”
Ed said. “Let’s see. What do we do best?”


“That’s easy,” Stanley replied. “What we do best is take actuarial exams.”


“Hmm. What do you say we take them all over again?” asked Ed with a sly smile.


“Why on earth would we want to subject ourselves to that torture?” asked Stanley.


“It wouldn’t exactly be US taking the exams. What if we take the exams under
a phony name?” asked Ed.


“A phony name? Isn't that called Identity Theft? That must be illegal."


"How can it be illegal? Exactly whose identity would we be stealing?"


"Good question. Taking the exams again is so ridiculous that it almost
makes sense! What if you and I each use the same phony name, and we alternate -
you take the spring exams and I take the fall exams?”


“Great! What name should we use?”


“I don’t know. What’s your favorite number?”


“e to the pi i. Oh, you mean my favorite non-negative integer? Then you
should have said so. Zero.” Ed wrote down a zero on a napkin. He stared at it.
He rotated it ninety degrees, then another ninety. Of course, it still looked like a zero.


Stanley took the napkin. He wrote in letters Z-E-R-O under the zero.
He rotated it ninety degrees. The he rotated it another ninety. “Look,” he
said excitedly. “There’s our phony name!” The letters were upside-down and
reversed, but the spelling was clear: O-R-E-Z.


Ed read the letters aloud. “Orez,” he said. “It almost sounds Spanish,
but I don't think it is. How about Joe Orez? After all, Joe really is nothing.”


Stanley raised his beer bottle. “Another toast,” he announced. “To the
birth of a new actuary, soon to be a Fellow. To Joe Orez.”


Ed and Stanley clinked their bottles and took a drink. They noticed a
couple of attractive women at the bar. “What do you think, Ed - should we
offer to buy them drinks?


“Nah,” replied Ed thoughtfully. “After all, we may be Fellows, but we’re
still nerds.”


Ed and Stanley left the bar and began making plans to fabricate Joe Orez. They
decided they would each need a picture ID to get into an exam center. Joe would need
an employer, and it had to be one nobody had ever heard of. They quickly listed off
other things they would need.


The next day after work, they practiced a Joe Orez signature until they could
both do it identically. They changed into black shirts with black ties, they each
slicked their dark hair back with gel in a decades old style, and they put on black
sunglasses. They went into a stationery store that sold passport photos, paid
fifteen dollars each, and had their photos taken and laminated onto official looking IDs.


The clerk didn’t blanch as both Ed and Stanley signed their new ID as Joe Orez.
Behind the black sunglasses they looked pretty similar, and they both had deep voices
that even sounded similar. They had decided on a company name for the ID cards -
Stanton Consulting - a partnership, that unlike a corporation did not have to be
registered and would therefore be hard to trace. Over the next few days, Stanton
Consulting got a post office box, a cell phone with a recorded message, a company
credit card, an e-mail address and a web page.

http://www.stantonconsulting.us


They agreed on a few ground rules. They would use one of those free online
calendars that the Internet companies were always pushing, to post which of them
were going to be Joe each day. If Joe appeared in public, he would only wear all
black, including the sunglasses, with slicked-back hair. As long as there was no
chance they could inadvertently both be Joe simultaneously, Joe could send e-mails,
answer the phone, attend actuarial meetings, and do everything any other actuary
could do.


Joe registered for the first two actuarial exams. He registered online, and he
paid with the company credit card. Ed helped Stanley study by preparing comprehensive
study notes. They figured by working together, they could cut the study time by about
two-thirds. Stanley and Ed were not particularly well-known actuaries, but now they
were afraid someone might recognize them when they showed up for an exam. So although
Joe registered to take the exams in New York City, where both Stanley and Ed worked,
they decided to change the registration at the last possible moment to Buffalo, where
no one knew them, claiming there was an emergency business trip. Stanley as Joe Orez
showed up for the exams in Buffalo, presented his picture ID at the door, and took the
exams without anyone being the wiser. Six weeks later, Joe Orez’s candidate number
appeared on the list for passing both exams.


Joe continued signing up for exams two at a time, with Ed and Stanley alternating
every six months on who actually appeared for the exam. Joe passed every exam he took,
and undoubtedly people noticed his name on the pass list multiple times for each sitting.


Meanwhile Ed and Stanley decided to start taking Joe public. Joe signed up for the
online Society and Rebel Outpost discussion forums, and he started posting comments.
Joe would critique each exam he took, and he would also comment on rating and reserving
practices, current events, ethics, and whatever else touched his imagination. If
someone wanted to discuss the quantity and size of shrimp at the Society convention
cocktail hour, Joe was ready with a comment. His comments were usually well thought
out, and he seemed to have a greater knowledge of actuarial practices than someone still
taking exams would normally have. But his comments also had a slight nasty tone to them,
and they often generated some spirited discussion.


Joe also showed up for some out-of-town actuarial club meetings. In his
unconventional outfit, he always attracted some attention. He would be sure to ask a
question during the discussion period, always stating his name. However, he would not
stay and mingle at the cocktail party afterwards.


It didn’t take long at this rate for Joe to pass his last exam and become a
Fellow. In fact, since Joe’s date of birth had been manufactured, he became one of
the youngest fellows ever. Joe registered for the annual Society meeting, proudly
wore his name badge, and got his Fellowship diploma. He duly posed for pictures with
the other new Fellows, but refused to remove his sunglasses. He flinched intentionally
when the photos were taken, so none of the official Society group photos captured him
very clearly. He didn’t mingle much at this meeting, where he thought the chances
were greater that he would run into someone from New York who would know him.


As a new Fellow, Joe was recruited for Society committee assignments. He only
joined committees where he could participate by teleconference rather than in person.
He joined an exam committee with the condition that he not be expected to attend
meetings, as his employer did not reimburse those expenses. He dutifully graded his
assigned exams at home and conferred with his grading partners by telephone. He
joined several other committees with the same condition, and he always participated
fully. Every committee chairperson gave Joe high ratings, and they recommended him
for higher-level positions up the committee hierarchy.


Occasionally Joe would get a telephone call. Ed and Stanley had bought a cell
phone with minimal monthly minutes, and had put a recorded message on it that
answered with the name of Stanton Consulting. There was a menu with a choice of
employees, none of whom could answer the phone right now, but please leave a message
and they would call you back. When someone left a message for Joe, Ed and Stanley
would figure out which of them should answer it, and one of them did. They did the
same with incoming e-mails. They were careful not to schedule two different
teleconferences for the same day. They used one of those European e-mail anonymizer
services so that even if they both sent e-mails on the same day, the anonymizer would
disguise the fact that the e-mails came from two different computers, making this
fact impossible to trace.


Joe started becoming famous, at least in actuarial circles. He wrote study
notes, he participated on twice as many committees as the average actuary, and he
was an outspoken critic in the online discussion forums for everything: the way
the exams are administered, the quality of speakers at Society meetings, the
Society election process, and some common actuarial techniques whose theoretical
bases were a little weak. He politely declined invitations to speak at panel
presentations, but otherwise Joe had become popular and one of the better-known
younger Society members.


Well, Joe was popular with the masses, but he was not quite so popular with
the Society staff and with the elected board of directors. To them, Joe seemed
to be constantly criticizing them. Unbeknownst to Ed and Stanley, the Society
staff and board were getting tired of Joe's unending criticisms. Joe was the topic
of a board meeting, when everyone realized the strangest thing - everyone had heard
of Joe, of course. But as well-known as Joe was, nobody on the board could remember
ever meeting him.


The Society staff pulled up Joe's file. He had passed all the exams, including
the Professionalism course. He had attended the annual meeting where he was inducted
as a Fellow, and he was included in the group photo of the new Fellows, although he
was pretty unrecognizable behind his dark glasses. He had served on numerous
actuarial committees, paid his dues on time with a valid credit card, and had
written numerous formal and informal documents. However, he never attended any
more actuarial conventions, including the ones where he should have attended to
present his papers.


"Why don't we just call him, and invite him to appear at the next board
meeting?" someone asked. "In fact, let's tell him we want to give him a plaque
in recognition of his many contributions to the Society. Then when he shows up,
we'll tell him to stop his countless criticisms of us, or else."


President Damien Brady agreed to make the call personally, right in the middle
of the board meeting. As expected, Joe did not pick up the phone, so Damien had to
leave a voice mail message. Not thirty minutes later, Damien got a call on his cell
phone. Joe thanked Damien for the honor, told him it was a great privilege to make
a few minor contributions to the Society, but Stanton Consulting discouraged such
trips. Damien suggested the Society would pay Joe's expenses, and he could speak
to Joe's boss if it would help. Joe replied that his own personal modesty suggested
such a trip was unnecessary, and Joe quickly but firmly declined and hung up.


The board was now more mystified than ever. Although Joe seemed to thrive on
the publicity his criticisms generated, he would not even appear at a little board
meeting to pick up a plaque.


Damien decided that it was just too strange that nobody had ever met Joe Orez,
and some members of the board half-jokingly questioned whether Joe really existed.
For someone with Joe’s numerous actuarial accomplishments, such a thing seemed
ridiculous. After considerable discussion, it was moved and seconded in a motion
that was not to be recorded that Damien authorize $1,000 to pay for someone to
prove once and for all whether Joe Orez really exists. The board knew it could
not afford a licensed private investigator for $1,000, but they thought another
actuary could solve this problem cheaper and quicker. Damien suggested his old
college buddy and fellow actuary, Rafael Gonzalez.


Damien chose Rafael for several reasons. Rafael was a well-respected Fellow,
but quiet and probably not well known among the younger actuaries. He worked in
New York City, as did Joe. Plus, Rafael was somewhat of a mystery buff, having
actually entered the Society's actuarial fiction contest with an original mystery
story a few years back.


Rafael was certainly surprised to get such an unusual request, but it piqued
his curiosity and he accepted. The first thing he did was dial Information, but
there was no telephone listing for a Joe or Joseph Orez, either listed or unlisted,
in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. He pulled up the Stanton Consulting web
site and confirmed that Joe’s business phone on the web site agreed with his listing
in the Society yearbook. He did a search to see who had registered the company web
site, and that name agreed with the name of an IT employee on the site. Rafael
wondered if he could just show up at Joe’s office and surprise him, but Stanton had
a post office box with no street address. He tried a different approach; he fired
off an e-mail to the president, Roger Stanton, asking for a meeting to discuss a
potential consulting assignment. Soon afterwards Roger replied, thanking Rafael
for his interest in Stanton Consulting, but regretfully declining because Stanton
only has a limited staff and was not accepting new projects right now.


Rafael gathered a collection of Joe Orez’s bulletin board postings. He studied
them, but he could not come up with any reason why they might be particularly
unusual. He decided for fun to forward them to Judy Maguire, an English professor
friend of his. At first Judy did not find them unusual either, although she commented
that Joe obviously has a highly narcissistic personality. However, a week later, she
e-mailed Rafael to tell him she had made a surprising discovery. Judy had run the
e-mails through a computer program designed to test authorship. Similar to the
tools used to test whether Francis Bacon or someone else wrote some of Shakespeare’s
plays, Judy concluded that due to the frequency of Joe’s word patterns, the
probability was high that more than one person wrote the Joe e-mails.

Judy had a couple more scholarly tidbits: “I don’t know if this is significant,
but did you know the name Orez is the Hebrew word for rice? But I checked with some
linguistics experts, and Orez is not a Hebrew surname and doesn’t seem to be a
surname of any known nationality.”


Not sure what to make of the rice and the Hebrew reference, but armed with this
knowledge that Joe’s identity was now more suspicious than ever, Rafael decided to
take a bold step. He e-mailed an actuarial survey to every Fellow. The idea was
brilliant, if somewhat unethical, and depended on a well-known security flaw in
most people’s word processing software: Rafael’s survey contained a hidden file
attachment. If the recipient completed the survey and e-mailed it back to Rafael,
Rafael would then have a small piece of spy software installed on the recipient’s
computer. Rafael was sure that the egotistical Joe could not resist the opportunity
to comment on Society matters, and indeed Joe was among the first Fellows who
returned the survey.


Several days later, Stanley and Ed met for beers in the same bar where the Joe
Orez idea had originated. Each of them had some Joe Orez news to share with the other.


Stanley explained that he discovered someone was hacking into his home computer.
Stanley considered himself quite the computer techie, and he had some elaborate
anti-spy software. He was able to probe backwards into the computer of the person
doing the spying until he discovered that person’s name. He didn’t recognize the
name, until he ran it against various databases of names. “You’ll never believe
who it is – another actuary!” he exclaimed. “I never heard of him, but he is some
older guy named Rafael Gonzalez.”


“I checked my computer, and I made sure to encrypt anything personal. As far
as Rafael knows, he has hacked into Joe Orez’s computer. In fact, I added a bunch
of actuarial spreadsheets and memos with different dates under Joe’s name. Then I
probed Rafael’s computer, and I discovered he is on a mission from the Society to
track down Joe’s identity.”


“Wow! What do you think we should do about this?” asked Ed.


“I think we should divert Rafael’s attention a little bit. I did some research
on him, and I was able to recreate enough of his employment and personal history to
be dangerous. I pretended to send Rafael’s resume to Stanton Consulting. Then I
sent Rafael an e-mail under the name of Roger Stanton, president of Stanton
Consulting, thanking Rafael for his resume and interest in the company, but
unfortunately there are no job openings at the moment. Soon Rafael’s resume
will go out to two hundred random actuarial employers. I wonder if one of those
two hundred is his current employer?”


“That should slow him down a little!” replied Ed. “Now I have some news for
you. I picked up a phone message for Joe today from one of the younger Fellows.
The Society presidential election is coming up, and the Nominating Committee has
put up a pretty stodgy candidate. The younger Fellows want Joe Orez to run for
Society president. Isn’t that hilarious?”


“What a goof that would be! I say we run Joe for president. After all, he
is so opinionated that he would make a wonderful candidate,” Stanley replied.


Ed agreed, and the two of them sent in the form to run Joe for Society
president. Joe was deliberately vague on his background – purposely omitting
his college degree, for example, since that would be something traceable. They
couldn’t have the scandal of Joe claiming to have a degree from, say Harvard,
when Harvard would have no record of him. Although his education was lacking,
in his short actuarial career Joe did have an impressive resume of Society committee
assignments and publications.


In the following months, Joe participated in the spirited online debate
over Society presidential issues, never failing to reply to any issue, no matter
how trivial. Joe always took the youthful, liberal, anti-establishment position,
much to the dismay of the older and more conservative actuaries. The Society
had grown so much in recent years, that there was talk that Joe had a majority
of the membership behind him. However, it was well known that the younger
actuaries felt disenfranchised by the Society and were unlikely to vote in
the election.


Breaking with tradition, the Nominating Committee’s candidate called Joe
and invited him to a face-to-face debate, to be shown live over the Internet.
Joe politely declined, not wanting any more exposure than he already had.


Stanley and Ed were having a great time with all this, howling in laughter
in how easily the Society had been duped over the whole Joe Orez charade.
Another thing they found pretty funny was a letter Rafael had sent to Roger
Stanton, apologizing for the fact that somehow his resume had been sent to
Roger in error. Stanley wondered how many similar letters Rafael had written
to other companies. Rafael seemed no closer to discovering Joe’s secret.


“Rafael doesn’t know what Joe looks like. Do you know what Rafael looks
like?” Ed asked.


“No, why?”


“I went to the post office box an hour ago to pick up Joe’s mail, and
there was a middle aged guy hanging around near Joe’s box as if he was waiting
to see who opened it,” Ed explained. “I decided not to go to the box with him
there.”


“I thought Rafael gave up on outing Joe. But if Rafael is still at the
post office, maybe Joe himself should pick up the mail today. How about if I
get dressed up as Joe and get the mail?”


“I love it! That will really freak Rafael out,” replied Ed.


Stanley went to the post office dressed as Joe, waited until there was a
large group of people he could sneak behind, and picked up the mail. Rafael had
been waiting a long time for someone to take mail out of Joe’s box, and he was
not ready for someone to do so. By the time Rafael recovered from his shock,
Joe was long gone. Stanley could see Rafael cursing from a distance away, that
he had missed his chance to catch Joe live.


A few more months passed, and finally it was time for the election. Joe
dutifully voted for himself as president, as did Stanley and Ed, so they know
Joe would get at least three votes. When the votes were counted, Joe had been
elected Society president.


“This is great,” exclaimed Stanley. “Can you imagine all the reforms we can
push through as president? Where should we start?”


“Are you crazy?” Ed asked. “Joe doesn’t exist. He can’t be president. Plus,
he is going to have to appear in public at the convention, to attend board meetings
and club meetings, and to give all sorts of speeches and presentations. How do we
get permission from our boss to do this? We can’t keep saying that Joe can’t
travel. I hate to say this, but I think it’s time to give up the charade.”


“You’re not saying that you want to confess Joe is a fraud, are you?” asked Stanley.


“I think we’ve taken this too far. Yes, I think it’s time to confess,” replied Ed.


“Do you mean confess publicly, like Dustin Hoffman did in the movie ‘Tootsie’?
I don’t think so,” Stanley said defiantly. “I’d rather die first than admit defeat.”


“Die? Wow – what a great idea! Let’s kill Joe! It would be so easy! All we
need to do is write an obituary and have it printed in the newspaper. Do you think
the newspaper actually verifies each death notice it prints?”


Ed made a quick call to The New York Times, and he learned the minimum price of
an obituary was $172. “Boy – the cost of dying is more expensive than I thought!
At least we can stop paying Society dues for him.”


Stanley looked at Ed with a tear in his eye. “This is so sad. Are you sure we
should do this? I feel like I’m losing a good friend.”


“I think it’s the merciful thing to do. Let Joe go out with the dignity he deserves.”


“Oh, let’s do one more thing before Joe dies. Let’s send our friend Rafael a
little package,” Stanley said, and he and Ed prepared a box. They included a note,
and they dated it October 31.


The obituary appeared in the Times on November 3. Just to be sure the Society
saw it, Roger Stanton faxed a copy to the Society office.

Joseph P. Orez, 25, of New York City, died unexpectedly in his sleep on November 1.
Mr. Orez was an actuarial consultant and partner at Stanton Consulting. He was a
Fellow in the actuarial society and despite his young age had recently been elected
its president. A private ceremony was held on November 2 for family and close
friends. Memorial donations may be made to the Actuarial Education and Research
Fund in Schaumburg, Illinois.


Phone calls and e-mails to Stanton Consulting received an auto-reply that the
company was devastated by the death of Joe Orez, and that the company was temporary
closed. Several weeks later Roger Stanton sent out an e-mail that the company could
not survive without its only actuary, and the company, which was a partnership, was
dissolving. Soon after, the telephone, web page, e-mail and post office box were all closed.


Damien Brady, the Society staff and the Society board considered the Joe Orez
matter closed. They thanked Rafael for his work and discharged him from his duties.
Rafael found the obituary extremely puzzling. He had many unanswered questions.
Why was there was no specific mention of surviving family members? What was the
name of the funeral parlor? Where were Joe’s remains? Rafael checked with the
Times. The obituary had been faxed to the newspaper with the letterhead of a funeral parlor, and the newspaper had a valid credit card charge for $172 for the obituary from Stanton Consulting. Rafael then tried to check on the funeral parlor, but nobody had heard of it. He called Information, and there was no personal phone listing for any member of Stanton Consulting. He was not happy with this turn of events.


The next day, Rafael received a box at work with the following note, dated
October 31:

Dear Mr. Gonzalez,

Although you and I have never met, I know you took an avid interest in my life and
activities. I am not feeling well, and I will not be needing these any longer.
Perhaps you would like them as a small remembrance of me.

Sincerely,

Joe Orez

The box contained the two pairs of Joe’s black sunglasses. As Rafael munched
on his lunch of Chinese take-out food at his desk, he looked at the sunglasses,
thought about Joe, and then looked at his food. Chicken with broccoli and rice.
Rice? Didn’t Judy the English professor say that Orez is Hebrew for rice? And
Hebrew is read from right to left. If you read Orez from right to left, you get
Zero. Could that mean something? Nah.

END

Why I wasnt here

2004-07-17T12:28:07Z