I aitn't dead

Yet. But I have been slacking off mightily. The new term is swimming along. Finance is currently a bit of a bore and if it reaches the same level of syllabus coverage and depth as CT2 is supposed to, I will frankly be surprised.

In the meantime, an interesting article from the BBC on questioning your assumptions.

Edit: Dur-boy here forgot to include the href to the above link, and cannot now remember what it referred to. Oh well. Tiddly pom.

Exams

Start tomorrow. I will be answering questions about financial maths: bond prices, inflation, cash flows, annuities, and other arcana. On Friday, I shall display my expertise in probability theory, and next week I will sit papers on multivariable calculus and on linear algebra. Following that, I shall imbibe some alcoholic liquids, and, should all go well, return in January for more multivariable calculus, more probability and statistics, more financial maths, and a course in "Finance and Financial Reporting", or more accurately "Accounting but it's not called accounting or none of you would sign up for it".

So until next time, here is the first appearance of the Stone Roses on television:



Amateurs!

Frist Psot!

Hello! I'm an student at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, in the second year of a four year undergraduate degree in Actuarial Science (the teaching pages for current students, probably more interesting than the front-end fluff, is here). I intend to blog about anything of relevance to my studies and intended career - who knows, someone may even find it useful.

The somewhat cryptic title of this blog is a reference to Edmond Halley's 1693 paper, published by the Royal Society, briefly titled "An Estimate of the Degrees of the Mortality of Mankind, Drawn from Curious Tables of the Births and Funerals at the City of Breslaw; With an Attempt to Ascertain the Price of Annuities upon Lives". This short paper was one of the first to tease a structured approach to pricing life insurance and annuities from a set of data describing life expectancy for a large population. The paper can be read online and Halley's insight and ability to recognise his assumptions are well worth the battle with seventeenth century English.