Actuarial Outpost

With the most recent exam rush, the Actuarial Outpost blew past some of its previous records.

Thanks to everyone for helping us grow into the world’s largest community of actuaries.  From our freshman student actuary, to our most senior credentialed actuary, we’re glad to have each and everyone of you here on the Actuarial Outpost discussion forum for actuaries.

Here’s a brief summary of our new all time high statistics.

At 6:27 PM, Thursday July, 2nd, we had a record setting 1,849 members online over a 24 hour period.

At 10:45 AM, Thursday, July, 2nd, the Actuarial Outpost had 1,647 active members and guests online.

Last week there were 14,367 posts made by our 18,704 members, who have accumulated 3,685,220 posts made in 159,442 discussion topics.

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As some of you may have noticed, with the recent May 2009 Actuarial Exam cycle, the server took a pretty good beating.  At our peak, we were cranking out 20 gigabytes of actuarial info, millions of pages at a time!  You could say we’re a victim of our own success.

We’d really like to see what this new server can do.  Help us beat our old record of most actuaries online, set at 1,605 on 07-02-2008 at 03:07 PM.  We really want to hit the 2000 mark, and make actuarial history, so email your fellow actuaries, and invite them to jon us.  You could simply send them these links http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/about and http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/register, and let them know why you read the outpost and why they should too.

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Well, some of them are actuarial in nature, and some of them are about nothing actuarial at all. It’s a new feature that allows every aspiring actuary, access to their own online journal, right here on the Outpost. Check out the Blogs

The blogs are on everything from actuarial exams to BBQ cooking. Don’t want the world to read it? No problem. Once you’re a member of our forum, you will be able to create your first blog post. You can then choose who can read your blog in your user control panel, under edit options. You can browse the public Actuarial Outpost Blogs here.

If you’d like to start your own actuary blog, you can register with the Actuarial Outpost by going to http://www.ActuarialOutpost.com/register or by sending an email (from any email provider) to “register” at “actuarialoutpost” dot com, and let me (Tom) know what you would like your user name to be. You’ll be a member of the First & Largest Online Actuarial Community, in no time.

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The AO would like to welcome its 15,000th member, smatho to the community. We’ve come a long way since the early days of this forum. I’d like to extend a big thanks to our 14,999 members who have been actively participating in our discussion forum, that ultimately encouraged our 15,000th member to join.

We’re glad to have such a large community of actuaries, who regularly answer question in the exam forum, and the occasional advice column in Non-Actuarial. Our next big milestone will be our 3.000.000th post. Who’s it gonna be? What will it say? What should we do to celebrate?

As for our 15,000th member, we’re not going to let you go home empty handed. We have a t-shirt/trophy and some other gifts for you, to mark this occasion. Look for your PM from Tom for details on how to claim your prize.

Again, thanks to all of our members who make this place a helpful study tool and a good place to network with other actuaries.

-Tom

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Help the world’s largest actuarial community build the world’s largest actuarial wiki database

http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/wiki

Though the wiki has been around for a few months now, we’ve decided to announce it to the public and invite you to help us create the newest study/informational resource for actuaries. We currently have two editors working on setting up the structure for the first four exams (P, FM, MLC/3, MFE, C/4), and we’d like your help, too.

If you’d like to contribute to our wiki (big or small), first make sure you have an ID on the discussion board (if not register), then send a private message to Tom, and ask for him to set you up with a Wiki Contributor account. All members who help with the wiki will get added privileges in the forum, similar to our 5 year members, site supporters, and note contributors.

Are you a little worried about whether or not you’ll be able to understand how the wiki works? No worries. Tom will send you a simiple crash course in wiki 101, and you’ll be a pro in no time. If you have any questions about how the wiki works, what we’re looking for, or anything else you can think of, you can discuss all wiki questions here.

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I found this on the net and thought it may be fun to see where all of our visitors are from. If you’d like to sign our guest book it’s easy. Just click “sign this guestbook”, fill out the form, maybe add a picture, and click “add” and your done. Hope everyone can get a good kick out of this. Continue Reading »

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We’ve recently added a number of new forums tailored just for the ActSci Universities across the US. If you have an actuarial science program that is not listed in our forum, send Tom an email or just leave a comment to this article and we’ll be sure to add your school to our regularly updated list. Our newest university added to the forum is Valparaiso University. For a full list of actuarial science universities, just continue reading this article or go directly to our Actuarial Science University Forum and start chatting.

In your school’s actuarial science forum, you can discuss/post your class notes, ask questions about homework / upcoming exam, or organize your next departmental social event. If you’d like your forum divided into more specific sub-forums, just send a private message or email to Tom, and he will be glad to help. If you’d like to get the word out about this growing resource, ask your school’s webmaster to post a link on your department’s home page to your school’s forum on the Actuarial Outpost. If you’re a teacher and would like help your students sign up for IDs on the Outpost, contact Tom via email at tom{at}actuarialoutpost.com, and he can create a list of login IDs for your students along with some other helpful “getting started” information.

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Like the Actuarial Outpost? Think it could be helpful for a friend taking exams? Why keep it secret, because now it’s easier than ever to invite your friends to the Outpost. Just like many other social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, the AO now has an email address import system that allows you to import all of your contacts from many popular email service providers. Once you’ve imported your contacts, you can pick and choose who receives an invite by clicking the check boxes that correspond with each email address. Then, just click ‘Invite Friends’ and each of your contacts will receive a personalized letter from you telling them about the different features of the Outpost, and how they can join. If you would like to invite some friends to the Outpost, follow this link – http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/invite.

If you do not use one of the email services providers, you can always send emails to your friends the old fashion way, one email at a time. I’ve made it easier to link to the register page as well. Just cut and paste this link – http://www.ActuarialOutpost.com/register – and send it to your friends, and they’ll be on their way to becoming Outpost posters in no time. Also, be sure to remind them that we only accept non-anonymous email addresses for registrations, which means no Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail or other accounts like that.

P.S. Yes, I see the irony in that we do not accept new registrations from the email providers listed in the address importer, but I’ve added some simple directions in the invite email that will help get around this catch.

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Do you have a question about that excel spreadsheet you’ve been working on all week? Think you’re close to fixing it, but you’re just not sure what to do? To help answer these types of questions that often come up, we’ve added the ability to upload Microsoft Excel documents (.xls) to your posts/threads in the forum.

We have a number of places in the forum that this can come in handy, especially in the Software & Technology Forum. Perhaps you just learned a new trick and want to show it off; now you can upload it so the whole world can see! The max upload size is currently set at 2 megabytes, but that can be increased if you find a need to upload a larger document. If this is the case or you just need some help, feel free to send a private message or email to Tom . Enjoy!

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Our very own member, CAPTAIN_MORGAN, and his teammates recently competed in the 203 mile Reach the Beach Relay Race. Their team, The Infrequent Runners Club, finished with an outstanding time of 31:45:52. That’s a 9:15 mile folks!

A field of approximately 4200 amateur athletes competed in The Ninth Annual Reach the Beach Relay on September 14 & 15. At 203 miles, the running adventure relay is one of the nation’s longest distance race of its kind. A portion of profits from the race will benefit the New Hampshire State Parks and community organizations along the race route. Continue Reading »

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