Ch5 Financial Economics

[oscar peterson]

Alrighty, I started into Panjer's Chapter 5, and I was wondering whether a repeat taker (or a first-timer, too) would offer some advice as to what to focus on here. Carmody's note provides his emphases; any disputes with them? I'd look at past exams myself and save your time, but I'd like to postpone looking at the exams until a little later in the study cycle. Thanks for your thoughts.

[Rocky]

I'd suggest reading JAM first and then attempting prob's at the end of the chapter in Fin. Econ. The book was/is very hard for me to follow. But hey, that's just me...

[Summer]

I haven't tried reading this book yet, but everyone says it is a beast! Good luck...I'll be there soon.

[Enough Exams Already]

It helps if you rewrite the equations in standard notation: make all vectors column vectors, left-multiply vectors by matrices, etc. Then it's easier to see what goes where and why. The section 5.2 material isn't that hard, once you put everything in the proper notation.

And section 5.3 isn't much more difficult; there's a little finesse required to mentally match history-paths with descending chains of subsets in the final measure space. (It sounds bad, but it's not that hard. Really.)

Just take your time, rewrite the notation into something familiar, and don't lose sight of the model Panjer's trying to build.

[BucsFan]

Focus on the math part AND the lists. There's no telling what the exam committee is going to do this spring.

[oscar peterson]

EnoughExamsAlready -- You're right. Actually writing out the matrix multiplications and seeing the 'weighted-averages' that arise helps keeps things clear. Thanks for the tip!