I’m listening to a legal “true crime” podcast. Guilty-as-anything defendant keeps complaining about this error, this oversight, this unfair ruling. But the thing is, none of those things really mattered. They didn’t materially contribute to the guilty verdict. The judge can say, when refusing an appeal, that those are “harmless errors” in that they did …
Category archives: complexity
Why gender at birth is not a coin toss
I love analogies. As analogies go, many things are well approximated by the “toss of a coin”. Gender at birth is not. And it’s not for two reasons, only one of which you can probably guess. The sex ratio at birth is not 1 boy to 1 girl. As of 2017, according to World Bank …
Voice authentication, spoofing and rates of change
“My voice is my password” and similar phrases have begun to be used for secure voice authentication for banks and health insurers and other critical services that require security and privacy. It’s likely that several of your own service providers will roll this out in the next couple of years. Progress, right? The problem is …
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Teaching critical thinking
I walk my daughter to school many mornings. On the way up the hill, we play a game. I tell three stories and she has to tell me which is untrue. So far it’s clearly been too easy as she gets them every time. That’s okay, I still plan to beat her at Carcassonne someday. …
Not this old outcry again
Life expectancy is one of those funny measures with a cavernous gap between those who think they understand it and those who do. The latest controversy arose a few days ago a year ago (this post has been in draft for a long time…) because Russia is planning to increase the normal retirement age from …
A private exhumation
Is this blog dead? No, but you could be forgiven for thinking so. I will be posting a little more frequently than over the last year. That isn’t a high bar. Given the long silence, there are quite a few topics I’ve been thinking about and discussing with friends and colleagues. You’ll have to check …
Why isn’t there more micro insurance in South Africa
After a recent Actuarial Society sessional presentation I gave on micro insurance and the regulatory developments, I was asked why there aren’t more micro insurers operating in South Africa. Here is a slightly paraphrased version of the full question: The larger insurance players seem reluctant to enter the market. Why do you think this market …
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Downwards counterfactual analysis
Stress and scenario testing are important risk assessment tools. They also provide useful ways to prepare in advance for adverse scenarios so that management doesn’t have to create everything from first principles when something similar occurs. But trying to imagine scenarios, particularly very severe scenarios, isn’t straightforward. We don’t have many examples of very extreme …