Future Uncertainty

We speak in chunks. A single word can connect to a world of shared meaning, or none at all. There is too much for us to understand, so we pick areas and hopefully have overlaps that allow the important bits to spread. Risk is a chunky word. When choosing a path to financial security, risk was the overlap I chose to study. Actuarial Science is a framework for making financial sense of future uncertainty. Primarily through statistical and business understanding of the past using large data sets. It takes advantage of the law of large numbers. There are different forms of uncertainty and risk. For most people, risk normally just means something going wrong. The study of risk goes wider than that. Looking at complexity, ambiguity, and the randomness of the world, and trying to find within that, “is there anything that we can rely on?”. When you look at individual instances of something, life can feel like a spin of the coin or roll of the dice. But if they are fair, there are 6 sides of a dice and 2 sides of a coin. Actuarial Science is partly the study of, and attempt to weather the storms of, “the underlying” rather than the specific result. A consideration for the variety of outcomes that is a form of “there, but for the grace of God, go I”. 

Roman Dice