A bit of a history [歷史] lesson today. Have you heard of the Luddite movement? Perhaps not, but I’m pretty sure you would know people who are joining the Luddite movement [盧德運動]! If I use a more familiar term, this is a movement which describes …
Still on the theme of Olympics [奧運] this week, and another philosophical topic for all of you guys to think about. Have you ever noticed that some bronze medallists are happier than the people who won silver? Well, some researchers did, and this is all …
Has everyone been following the Olympic games [奧運會]? Sometimes you can tell which sport [運動] some athlete [運動員] plays just by their body shape. This got me thinking about Equity [公平] versus Equality [平等]. This can be a very philosophical [哲學性] debate as to which is right or wrong. …
Remember the blog recently on the diamond and water paradox? Somewhat related to that is Positional Goods [位置性產品], which is the topic of today. Usually when you think about how much something is worth, you generally look at how much supply and demand there is. …
No theory this week! It’s the Summer [夏天] now, and a lot of students may be using these last few weeks to really study as hard as they can before the exams come up in autumn [秋天]. As I’ve sat through quite a number of …
Everyone’s probably heard of the Good Samaritan [撒瑪利亞人]. However, think about the person on the receiving end. If that person keeps on getting help and knows that help will always come, what behaviour does this promote? This is exactly what today’s blog will be about: …
Have you ever thought about how certain things are priced [定價] in your everyday life? Could it be linked to the amount of value [價值] that it brings to you? In that case, how come water, which is so important for survival, is so much …
A bit more technical this week I’m afraid. We are looking at the Simpson’s Paradox [辛普森悖論]. Some of you may have encountered some examples of this in real life. The definition of Simpson’s Paradox is that you can observe some correlational trends [相關性] when you …
Correlation [相關性] and relationships between factors is always something we look for as actuaries. This allows us to predict future outcomes more easily. How do we determine these relationships? Just by looking at historical data [過去數據] or observable information. You might be thinking, more factors …
I think most of you would have heard of correlation [相關性] versus causation [因果關係]. The idea here is that just because two things are correlated (in other words, when one goes up, the other goes up by the same proportion [比例]) doesn’t mean that one …
Think about the last time you had a bet [賭注] with someone. Or maybe a time when you accidentally paid too much in a shop. In both cases, you can clearly see that there is a “winner” and a “loser”. The winner won exactly the …
Conflict of interest [利益衝突] is one of those concepts where if you truly understand and look out for it, even in every life, you start to understand what is going on in the world and what drives people’s thoughts. The definition of this is when …
So last week we talked about moral hazard. This week’s topic is closely related, and is also very relevant to the insurance industry [保險界] (although probably useful in everyday life too). Similar to last week, let me give you a real life example then we’ll …
The topic of today is about moral hazard [道德風險] which is a very important concept in insurance. Lets talk about an experience I had. When you’re with your friends, have you ever tried playing gambling games [賭博遊戲] but without using actual money (for example, having …
Over the journey of being an actuary, have you ever felt that the more you learnt, the less about the world you know? Have you ever met people who you thought were actually not that smart [醒目], but were not smart enough to know that …