Course 4 Texts / Manuals

[bg23516]

So, it looks like many people here are confident in their Course 3 performance. Maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I was curious anyway. Any suggestions on Course 4 texts?

I know of:
Mahler & Pai Notes
ASM
Actex

Anything else? Any recomendations?

[Cynic]

Mahler's notes are good (especially on the Credibility part).

ASM is excellent. I repeat that I give ASM the most credit for helping me pass the exam.

Actex is good for practice exams.

Pai's notes and CSM are not very helpful, IMO.

[J.T.]

I agree with Cynic except about the Actex...

I wouldn't bother getting it.

I used Mahler and ASM the most.

[Toonces]

Personally, for me, Mahler and Pai were very useful, ASM was not. ASM requires you to read the book. The practice questions were good, but the written material was to concise and not explanitory enough for me.

However, most on this board seem to like ASM, which is why I bought it.

[AfroSoul]

ASM seems to be the popular choice but it only works as an addendum to having read the text books first. Personally, I used both ASM and BPP. BPP was a complete substitute for the text books which is good because it presents the material in a more palpable form, less cryptic english, better explanations than the text etc. I used ASM for the questions since BPP doesn't have that many questions. If you want my opinion, that would be the way to go about it. These text books and study notes are unnecessarily obtuse and make things seem a lot harder than thy really are so save your money and just by the BPP manual and if you want you can get ASM also.

[ma'ak]

i hear people saying NOT to get the actex, but i'm not sure i agree. there are several items that i found the actex to be extremely helpful in explaining. the first was excess mortality. if you can read the survival analysis book and understand excess mortality, you're a hell of a bunch brighter than me, but the actex gives examples that certainly clarify the calculations, imho.

[Smash Puny Human]

I agree that ASM was the best. I also used HTP as a rough intro to the material. I originally bought the actex but only used sparingly after I bought ASM.