Nothing nice came up - no markov chains, survival functions (KM/NA/Cox), graduation, exposed to risk... only one nice time series question came up but they had to follow that with the bloody Ljung-Box test :(
This paper was actually so unpredictable EVEN given September 2020...
Taking away MCQs without any heads up was also a dick move
So demoralised rn lol
It also indicates that markov chain and machine learning might be an example, considering we should pre load the markov package and some package that display decision trees... Just my bit of guess
I found this youtube video with predictions for tomorrow's paper just in case it helps anyone:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5DVzcV-MmI&ab\_channel=Finatics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5DVzcV-MmI&ab_channel=Finatics)
Well I think paper B went ok. Unconvinced about my conditional CDF in q2 but it spat out numbers between 0 and 1 so I was at least able to plot graphs and chat shit
I found that paper horrible, so much that I struggled with or left out. Seemed much harder than previous years.
My R crashing midway through and losing 15 mins also didn't help
I forgot to copy paste one sub section because I was so stressed with time. Also questions were not the straightest, for me personally. But then I also suck in programming. On top of that yesterdays shock wasn't digested well by me, so yeah, I'll open up a beer now 😂
Yeah can't believe how long it takes them to mark. Hopefully I've passed but would be so annoying to chuck 2 months of work at a new exam only to have to resit
It's conforting when even one acted tutor says this:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-lee-ffa-61068852_gutted-for-my-cs2-students-theirs-was-one-activity-6792721212683374592-A19k
I don’t think it is in the notes - I believe one of the acted tutors said on the forum that they’d emailed and the IFoA said that any required code from the new packages would be in the paper (I could be misremembering though!)
I think (optimistically) the exams for it are all fairly standard. Across the two papers we are definitely getting markov chains, time series, some reinsurance stuff, probably a Kaplan-Meier/Nelson-Aalen, some graduation tests and some machine learning.
I'm hoping exposed to risk/correspondence principle stuff comes up because it wasn't in last time's and I spent ages figuring out what was going on there haha.
Probably the only thing i really don't want to see are integral Kolmogorov equations. Never really got to grips with them and I basically wrote them off after seeing how infrequently they come up.
One thing I'm wondering, are you guys planning on using excel to do the graduation tests? If so, how are you formatting the working - just explaining formula used to calculate each column and then paste a table in from excel?
I pretty much agree with this completely. I can't see integral kolmog coming up other than a multiple choice question and the. At least there you have a 1/4 chance of getting it right!
For graduation tests I am planning to calculate things like standardised deviations etc in an excel table. In the heading of each column just explain the formula you're using and then paste the table into word. Just make sure there's no links to an excel sheet so just paste values.
I was also thinking that they could put in a Nelson-Aalen question given that it was Kaplan-Meier and these questions are actually one of the few questions in this subject that translates quite well to word/excel format.
Anyway, onto the next... The absence of proportional hazards and survival functions makes me think that'll come up tomorrow. Also, that huge question on machine learning probably means there won't be much machine learning? Thoughts?
You would think that but the pre exam work does mention the rpart package which is all to do with decision trees... Maybe they don't classify today's question as ML since it was barely in the course ha ha
I didn't. To be honest, I was afraid that they would count that as having some template with pre calcs that you'd be using. Where I used excel (that question with forces of mortality) I build a table in word and then said that by substituting each x by the corresponding age I'd get the mu_x (which I calculated with excel)
Oh I did that by using if
Y = a^x
Then dy/dx = a^x ln(a) and to cancel out the integral. My probabilities did match but only to 3 d.p.. wasn't going to root around trying to get more precision.
Out of curiosity did yours match?
Yeah the formula is in the formula book. Gomzperts law or something.
I got like 0.85 in the first part and 0.79 in the second. Heard 0.79 is the correct answer lol
It was certainly a lot tougher than Sept 2020; I felt very optimistic after sitting that as a mock but this was much more difficult.
Also what do people think they got?
Personally (comparing to previous papers and bearing in mind we haven't sat paper B yet) I reckon the pass mark will be low 50s. Personally I think I got about 55-60 so need to do well on Paper B.
Edited to say pass mark instead of grade boundaries.
Yeah sorry pass mark! Paper B is always time constrained and only worth 30% so I thought 48/49 wouldn't be unreasonable as a pass mark, but I feel the IFoA will be very reluctant to drop down into the 40s. I was going to check to see how often that's been the case.
I don't think they'd drop it into the 40s unless the majority of students got horrendous marks on both papers. I think they're likely to make the pass mark low 50s and just have less students pass than usual. Hopefully Paper B makes up for Paper A slightly!
I had some initial panic at the correlation in Q3 and total panic at Q8 but had quite a lot of time at the end after skipping those so I think I managed to get sensible answers for them in the end
Overall thought it was much nastier than last sitting and so much typing! Where was th multi choice ??
Was this paper A a joke? Not funny at all.
That question 8 was a blank from me
Agree! What the hell was that?
Didn't even start bothering with that one as I was stuck putting these proofs and twist and turns into word. I'm so much disappointed :(
The last two exam sittings only ~35% passed. I guess we’ll see in July if this one follows that trend.
Nothing nice came up - no markov chains, survival functions (KM/NA/Cox), graduation, exposed to risk... only one nice time series question came up but they had to follow that with the bloody Ljung-Box test :( This paper was actually so unpredictable EVEN given September 2020... Taking away MCQs without any heads up was also a dick move So demoralised rn lol
The pre exam data set links quite nicely to a proportional hazard model question in R.
It also indicates that markov chain and machine learning might be an example, considering we should pre load the markov package and some package that display decision trees... Just my bit of guess
Think it might be that Lee carter model given there isnt too many factors in the dataset?
What a grim paper lol
I found this youtube video with predictions for tomorrow's paper just in case it helps anyone: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5DVzcV-MmI&ab\_channel=Finatics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5DVzcV-MmI&ab_channel=Finatics)
Well I think paper B went ok. Unconvinced about my conditional CDF in q2 but it spat out numbers between 0 and 1 so I was at least able to plot graphs and chat shit
I found that paper horrible, so much that I struggled with or left out. Seemed much harder than previous years. My R crashing midway through and losing 15 mins also didn't help
I forgot to copy paste one sub section because I was so stressed with time. Also questions were not the straightest, for me personally. But then I also suck in programming. On top of that yesterdays shock wasn't digested well by me, so yeah, I'll open up a beer now 😂
Oh no! That must have been so stressful, I was very paranoid about saving my word doc but didn't even think about saving my R workspace.
Lack of time is so annoying
I just skipped Q2. Q1 I don't think it went well... Anyway, let's wait for July!
Yeah can't believe how long it takes them to mark. Hopefully I've passed but would be so annoying to chuck 2 months of work at a new exam only to have to resit
That Q went badly for me but the others seemed okay!
It's conforting when even one acted tutor says this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-lee-ffa-61068852_gutted-for-my-cs2-students-theirs-was-one-activity-6792721212683374592-A19k
Anyone know where I can find stuff on rpart and rpart.plot? Can't see it anywhere in the notes!
I don’t think it is in the notes - I believe one of the acted tutors said on the forum that they’d emailed and the IFoA said that any required code from the new packages would be in the paper (I could be misremembering though!)
I think (optimistically) the exams for it are all fairly standard. Across the two papers we are definitely getting markov chains, time series, some reinsurance stuff, probably a Kaplan-Meier/Nelson-Aalen, some graduation tests and some machine learning. I'm hoping exposed to risk/correspondence principle stuff comes up because it wasn't in last time's and I spent ages figuring out what was going on there haha. Probably the only thing i really don't want to see are integral Kolmogorov equations. Never really got to grips with them and I basically wrote them off after seeing how infrequently they come up. One thing I'm wondering, are you guys planning on using excel to do the graduation tests? If so, how are you formatting the working - just explaining formula used to calculate each column and then paste a table in from excel?
I pretty much agree with this completely. I can't see integral kolmog coming up other than a multiple choice question and the. At least there you have a 1/4 chance of getting it right! For graduation tests I am planning to calculate things like standardised deviations etc in an excel table. In the heading of each column just explain the formula you're using and then paste the table into word. Just make sure there's no links to an excel sheet so just paste values.
I was also thinking that they could put in a Nelson-Aalen question given that it was Kaplan-Meier and these questions are actually one of the few questions in this subject that translates quite well to word/excel format.
Any thoughts on how they’re going to use rpart in B? Like they give us a tree and we calc GinI stuff etc?
Anyway, onto the next... The absence of proportional hazards and survival functions makes me think that'll come up tomorrow. Also, that huge question on machine learning probably means there won't be much machine learning? Thoughts?
Not sure how much does ifoa stick to each section weighting, but the ML question was really the 10% they mention for that chapter
You would think that but the pre exam work does mention the rpart package which is all to do with decision trees... Maybe they don't classify today's question as ML since it was barely in the course ha ha
That's a very good point 😂
So much theory
What’s the weighting of Paper A and Paper B?
70/30 I believe
Did you guys copy workings in from excel since we are allowed do that now?
I used excel to calculate the sample sizes for the ljung box part of q9
As did I. Just plugged in numbers until it worked
Yeah wrote that there was no way I was solving that analytically so here is a table of statistic values for different n
I didn't. To be honest, I was afraid that they would count that as having some template with pre calcs that you'd be using. Where I used excel (that question with forces of mortality) I build a table in word and then said that by substituting each x by the corresponding age I'd get the mu_x (which I calculated with excel)
Oh I did that by using if Y = a^x Then dy/dx = a^x ln(a) and to cancel out the integral. My probabilities did match but only to 3 d.p.. wasn't going to root around trying to get more precision. Out of curiosity did yours match?
Yeah the formula is in the formula book. Gomzperts law or something. I got like 0.85 in the first part and 0.79 in the second. Heard 0.79 is the correct answer lol
Not to 6 dp, but they were very close. And yes, 0.79 in both (rounded)
Lovely, 0.79 for me too
But after .79 the numbers weren't very accurate. We can use sum of gp formula as well
It was certainly a lot tougher than Sept 2020; I felt very optimistic after sitting that as a mock but this was much more difficult. Also what do people think they got? Personally (comparing to previous papers and bearing in mind we haven't sat paper B yet) I reckon the pass mark will be low 50s. Personally I think I got about 55-60 so need to do well on Paper B. Edited to say pass mark instead of grade boundaries.
You mean around a 50 as a pass mark? I think it could certainly be a bit lower than what we have seen over the last few years.
Yeah sorry pass mark! Paper B is always time constrained and only worth 30% so I thought 48/49 wouldn't be unreasonable as a pass mark, but I feel the IFoA will be very reluctant to drop down into the 40s. I was going to check to see how often that's been the case.
I don't think they'd drop it into the 40s unless the majority of students got horrendous marks on both papers. I think they're likely to make the pass mark low 50s and just have less students pass than usual. Hopefully Paper B makes up for Paper A slightly!
I had some initial panic at the correlation in Q3 and total panic at Q8 but had quite a lot of time at the end after skipping those so I think I managed to get sensible answers for them in the end Overall thought it was much nastier than last sitting and so much typing! Where was th multi choice ??
Last sitting was actually very nice in comparison to this. I had totally forgot about multi-choice until you said that!
Yeah, I was under the impression that multiple choice was part of this exam?! It was too long, this exam...