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Publication of “Practice Problems in Advanced Topics in General Insurance” – ACTEX Study Guide by G. Stolyarov II

Publication of “Practice Problems in Advanced Topics in General Insurance” – ACTEX Study Guide by G. Stolyarov II

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Practice Problems in Advanced Topics in General Insurance

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Written by Gennady Stolyarov II, ASA, ACAS, MAAA, CPCU, ARe, ARC, API, AIS, AIE, AIAF

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Published by ACTEX Publications
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1st Edition: Spring 2016

 

Students preparing for Society of Actuaries Exam GIADV: Advanced Topics in General Insurance will benefit from Mr. Stolyarov’s latest book, Practice Problems in Advanced Topics in General Insurance. Three options are available for purchase.

ACTEX GIADV Study Guide Cover
Hard-Copy/Electronic Bundle – https://www.actexmadriver.com/product.aspx?id=453107178
Hard Copy – https://www.actexmadriver.com/product.aspx?id=453107176
Electronic – https://www.actexmadriver.com/product.aspx?id=453107177

Comments from the Author: This book of practice problems is the most comprehensive culmination of my efforts to date, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to work with ACTEX Publications to bring all of these resources to candidates in one convenient compilation so that they will spend less time gathering problems from many separate sources. The Spring 2016 edition of this book is approximately 400 pages long and includes 613 practice problems and full solutions. 531 of the problems/solutions are original creations of mine.

This book is structured to align precisely with the five syllabus topics and eight syllabus papers (including the Lee paper, new on the Spring 2016 Exam GIADV syllabus) – each of which has a section of problems devoted to it. The following is a summary breakdown of what you will find:

  Problems by Source
Section (and Syllabus Paper) Original SOA CAS Total
1 (Mack) 21 5 5 31
2 (Venter) 22 4 5 31
3 (Clark LDF) 60 4 6 70
4 (Marshall et al.) 103 4 4 111
5 (Lee) 44 0 12 56
6 (Clark Reinsurance) 139 8 9 156
7 (D’Arcy / Dyer) 99 4 6 109
8 (Mango) 43 4 2 49
TOTAL 531 33 49 613

 

Each section presents all of the problems in succession, followed by the solutions at the end. You are encouraged to attempt each problem on your own and write down or type your solution, and then look at the answer key for step-by-step explanation and/or calculations. As this book is a learning tool, I have provided relevant citations from the syllabus readings for many of the practice problems. Also, I am not an advocate of leaving any problems as unexplained “exercises to the reader.” While each of these problems is intended to be an exercise for you, this book’s purpose is to show you how they can be solved as well – so give each of them your best attempt, but know that detailed answers are available for you to check your work and fill in any gaps that may have prevented you from solving a problem yourself.

Paradoxes, Not Contradictions – Post by G. Stolyarov II

Paradoxes, Not Contradictions – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
September 10, 2013
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I am personally fond of Ayn Rand’s identification of certain matters as “paradoxes, but not contradictions”. In my view, contradictions do not exist in reality, though there may be elements that are difficult to reconcile mentally because of incomplete information or preliminary errors in one’s perception of existence.

A paradox arises when a person’s initial intuitions do not appear to hold. This means that either the initial intuitions are wrong, or one’s information is incomplete. For instance, the famous “water-diamond paradox” of Classical economics was an inability to explain why the price of water, which is essential for life, was so much lower than the price of diamonds, which, at the time, only had uses in jewelry and decoration. The 1871 Marginalist Revolution (a development independently arrived at by Carl Menger, Leon Walras, and William Stanley Jevons) resolved the paradox by explaining a key fact about human valuation that the Classical economists had missed – namely, that a person does not evaluate the entire stock of a given good, but only considers particular quantities of goods at the margin. So the paradox was resolved in an entirely rational, non-contradictory manner, by demonstrating that the abundance of water has enabled its life-sustaining uses to be fulfilled for most individuals, while the relative scarcity of diamonds means that, for most consumers, any diamond they obtain would be put to the highest-valued purpose they would find for a diamond.
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I see the progress of human civilization as, in part, consisting of the increasing resolution of paradoxes. While, of course, it is possible that new paradoxes would arise as the old ones are resolved, these paradoxes arise on the boundaries of the new intellectual territory that is yet to be fathomed and incorporated into the domain of human mastery. Paradoxes, mysteries, and unresolved questions occur on the outermost edges of human advancement at any given time. As the edges expand, old mysteries and paradoxes are solved and new ones may arise in territory that was previously completely unexplored. In this sense, encountering a paradox can be seen as a challenge – a call to resolve the quandary and thereby score gains for human progress. As a meliorist who sees no limits to the potential of human reason and technology, I think that all questions are ultimately answerable and all paradoxes are solvable, given enough time, effort, and proper means. Sometimes the resolution of a paradox requires highly creative, unorthodox, and unprecedented thinking – which must transcend conventional dichotomies and posited antagonisms in order to arrive at a new understanding.