SOA Sample Question 196

[Jonnyboy]

This is not a particularly difficult sample problem, but it is an extremely tedious one. While doing timed practice problems I came across this one, and after spending a few minutes setting up the solution I thought to myself "F**k this, the algebra here is going to kill me!" and I moved on. However, after finishing a few other problems I went back to #196 (after looking at the answer to ensure that there was no special trick I was missing), and decided to time how long it would take me to complete it.

Knowing exactly how to solve the problem, and being confident in that method, it took me 9:42 to come up with the correct solution: 3.089. Worse still, the solution is very close to being in between the ranges of the solutions given, which would cause me to panic in an exam setting (I like not having to worry about rounding errors, etc).

For those of you who have taken the exam, how many questions are there that require over 9 minutes to come up with the answer (assuming you know exactly how to solve it)? Alternatively, should I be able to solve this problem faster than I did?

[swifthat]

This question was dumb. As soon as I saw it I knew it was going to be very tedious. It felt like this was the SOA's way of hinting at us to just "memorize" MLE formulas