Actuarial Outpost

The AO would like to welcome its 15,000th member, smatho to the community. We’ve come a long way since the early days of this forum. I’d like to extend a big thanks to our 14,999 members who have been actively participating in our discussion forum, that ultimately encouraged our 15,000th member to join.

We’re glad to have such a large community of actuaries, who regularly answer question in the exam forum, and the occasional advice column in Non-Actuarial. Our next big milestone will be our 3.000.000th post. Who’s it gonna be? What will it say? What should we do to celebrate?

As for our 15,000th member, we’re not going to let you go home empty handed. We have a t-shirt/trophy and some other gifts for you, to mark this occasion. Look for your PM from Tom for details on how to claim your prize.

Again, thanks to all of our members who make this place a helpful study tool and a good place to network with other actuaries.

-Tom

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Help the world’s largest actuarial community build the world’s largest actuarial wiki database

http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/wiki

Though the wiki has been around for a few months now, we’ve decided to announce it to the public and invite you to help us create the newest study/informational resource for actuaries. We currently have two editors working on setting up the structure for the first four exams (P, FM, MLC/3, MFE, C/4), and we’d like your help, too.

If you’d like to contribute to our wiki (big or small), first make sure you have an ID on the discussion board (if not register), then send a private message to Tom, and ask for him to set you up with a Wiki Contributor account. All members who help with the wiki will get added privileges in the forum, similar to our 5 year members, site supporters, and note contributors.

Are you a little worried about whether or not you’ll be able to understand how the wiki works? No worries. Tom will send you a simiple crash course in wiki 101, and you’ll be a pro in no time. If you have any questions about how the wiki works, what we’re looking for, or anything else you can think of, you can discuss all wiki questions here.

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I found this on the net and thought it may be fun to see where all of our visitors are from. If you’d like to sign our guest book it’s easy. Just click “sign this guestbook”, fill out the form, maybe add a picture, and click “add” and your done. Hope everyone can get a good kick out of this. Continue Reading »

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We’ve recently added a number of new forums tailored just for the ActSci Universities across the US. If you have an actuarial science program that is not listed in our forum, send Tom an email or just leave a comment to this article and we’ll be sure to add your school to our regularly updated list. Our newest university added to the forum is Valparaiso University. For a full list of actuarial science universities, just continue reading this article or go directly to our Actuarial Science University Forum and start chatting.

In your school’s actuarial science forum, you can discuss/post your class notes, ask questions about homework / upcoming exam, or organize your next departmental social event. If you’d like your forum divided into more specific sub-forums, just send a private message or email to Tom, and he will be glad to help. If you’d like to get the word out about this growing resource, ask your school’s webmaster to post a link on your department’s home page to your school’s forum on the Actuarial Outpost. If you’re a teacher and would like help your students sign up for IDs on the Outpost, contact Tom via email at tom{at}actuarialoutpost.com, and he can create a list of login IDs for your students along with some other helpful “getting started” information.

Continue Reading »

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Like the Actuarial Outpost? Think it could be helpful for a friend taking exams? Why keep it secret, because now it’s easier than ever to invite your friends to the Outpost. Just like many other social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, the AO now has an email address import system that allows you to import all of your contacts from many popular email service providers. Once you’ve imported your contacts, you can pick and choose who receives an invite by clicking the check boxes that correspond with each email address. Then, just click ‘Invite Friends’ and each of your contacts will receive a personalized letter from you telling them about the different features of the Outpost, and how they can join. If you would like to invite some friends to the Outpost, follow this link - http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/invite.

If you do not use one of the email services providers, you can always send emails to your friends the old fashion way, one email at a time. I’ve made it easier to link to the register page as well. Just cut and paste this link - http://www.ActuarialOutpost.com/register - and send it to your friends, and they’ll be on their way to becoming Outpost posters in no time. Also, be sure to remind them that we only accept non-anonymous email addresses for registrations, which means no Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail or other accounts like that.

P.S. Yes, I see the irony in that we do not accept new registrations from the email providers listed in the address importer, but I’ve added some simple directions in the invite email that will help get around this catch.

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Do you have a question about that excel spreadsheet you’ve been working on all week? Think you’re close to fixing it, but you’re just not sure what to do? To help answer these types of questions that often come up, we’ve added the ability to upload Microsoft Excel documents (.xls) to your posts/threads in the forum.

We have a number of places in the forum that this can come in handy, especially in the Software & Technology Forum. Perhaps you just learned a new trick and want to show it off; now you can upload it so the whole world can see! The max upload size is currently set at 2 megabytes, but that can be increased if you find a need to upload a larger document. If this is the case or you just need some help, feel free to send a private message or email to Tom . Enjoy!

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Our very own member, CAPTAIN_MORGAN, and his teammates recently competed in the 203 mile Reach the Beach Relay Race. Their team, The Infrequent Runners Club, finished with an outstanding time of 31:45:52. That’s a 9:15 mile folks!

A field of approximately 4200 amateur athletes competed in The Ninth Annual Reach the Beach Relay on September 14 & 15. At 203 miles, the running adventure relay is one of the nation’s longest distance race of its kind. A portion of profits from the race will benefit the New Hampshire State Parks and community organizations along the race route. Continue Reading »

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The title says it all. The Actuarial Science University Map is now updated with a new look. We’ve also added our friends over at the University of Florida Actuarial Science Program. If we’ve overlooked your school, send Tom a PM or an email and ask him to include your school on the map. Be sure to include your schools information, such as the name, website, departmental contact along with contact information such as email, phone number, and address.

It’s still a work in progress. The list of schools that is on the right hand side of the screen will be collapsible and if I can think of any more bells and whistles to add to it, you can be sure to see those on there soon, as well.

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Hello Outposters,

You can now test out the new layout for the actuarial discussion forum. You can follow this link to check out version 2 of the forum default, or you could go to the discussion board, scroll to the bottom of the page, and choose “Default Style v2.0″ from the drop-down list in the footer. Either way, try it out, see if you like it, and let me know if anything needs to be fixed (or if it just doesn’t look right, or perhaps an idea to make it better ).

Currently the drop-down tool bar has no functionality, but over the next few days, you will notice little buttons appearing here and there as I make changes. If you have any suggestions, you can always add a comment to this post, send me a PM (Tom), or send me an email at tom [the at symbol thing] ActuarialOutpost.com

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Hello there!

After a lot of long hours, cups of coffee, and a few tears this is what I came up with. Currently the Demo Access and the Quick Tour are not available, but they should be in about a week. You can still use our Actuarial Discussion Forum just as you always have, it’s just a new look.

Soon, the discussion forum will follow a similar design, though version 1 of the Outpost will remain as an option for viewing the forums. Keep your eyes open for new things here and there. Though we’ve taken a big step today with the new design, there will be more features added to the Outpost over the next few weeks. I hope everyone enjoys (or at least isn’t too bothered by) the new design of the Actuarial Outpost.

-Tom

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