Who said insurance isn’t fun? Dispelling myths about the humorless actuary, part 3

August 18th, 2008 by Julie Ferguson

OK, we ended last week on a bit of a light note and we are going to start this week off in a similar vein. After all, if you are reading this, you are one of about one hundred twenty people who is not on vacation this week.
We chanced upon this video clip of an actuarial type (Gene from Humana?) channeling Marvin Gaye in a catchy ditty called Actuarial Healing – a command performance, I think you will agree.
And if you are nerdy enough to have found that hilarious (as I did), you might be tickled by this musical group of mathematical students — The Klein Group Four — singing Finite Simple Group (of Order Two), a clever a Capella number written in mathematical theorems.
And while we’re on the singing math geeks vein, we can’t overlook I Will Derive – no doubt destined to be a hit. And here’s a pretty clever four year old who seems to be on a scientific path rather than a mathematical path (styled after Tom Lehrer’s classic song), but the kid displays enough nerdy obsession that we should try to divert him to our industry.
Lastly, we have no idea what’s going on with the Australian actuaries, but their biannual meetings look fascinating.
We’ve featured actuarial humor once or twice before here on Workers’ Comp Insider, but let’s get serious. In the interests of doing our part to clear up any negative stereotypes about actuaries that might be out there, we quote a press release issued by the Society of Actuaries a few years ago in response to the film “About Schmidt” in which Jack Nicholson portrayed a math-obsessed, socially disconnected retired actuary with a bad comb-over:

“While highly humorous, the perception of actuaries — based on the character portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the film — is incorrect … to be more to the point (literally), the perception that actuaries are math-obsessed is 94.00632% incorrect, the perception that actuaries are socially disconnected is 98.34343% incorrect, and – most shockingly of all – the perception that actuaries tend to favor bad comb-overs is 99.67893% erroneous.”

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