Probability essential for Actuary Course?

Fince

i'm hoping (i'll confirm in nine days) to be doing a financial maths/actuary course of some descrption come september.

is probability prominent in alot of them? or the one in dcu to be more specific?

i didn't cover any of the probability (or statistics for that matter) for the leaving cert. i'd be willing to work at it to get myself up to a certain standard over the next few weeks if i thought it would benefit me come september.

anybody have any experience or advise on the matter?

Fremen

I have an MSc in mathematical finance, yeah. I don't know what modules you'd be covering in an Actuary course (accounting, etc...), but I can advise a little on FinMath.

You will be doing lots of probability. Lots and lots and lots. In first year, it would help to get very good at integration and differentiation. Don't worry too much about learning probability unless you want to read ahead, they'll teach everything from scratch, including calculus and matrices.

Modern probability is based on a branch of maths called measure theory, (which I personally find mind-bendingly dull ). Most advanced books on probability will introduce it via measure theory. While it's important to know measure theory later on (say second or third year), it would just confuse things starting off. I don't really know any decent beginner probability books which don't use measure theory, but you could try something from the Springer Undergraduate Mathematics Series.

Anyway, the best books I know of for financial maths are:

Stochastic Calculus for Finance: Volumes I and II (Shreve) (very good, doesn't assume much knowledge)
Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus (Karatzas and Shreve)
Probability Essentials (Jacod and Protter)
Probability with Martingales (Williams)

Not that I'm saying you should buy them, but it's probably worth being aware of them. If you knew them back to front, you'd pretty much have the best part of a degree already.

Much as I hate to say it, the forums on http://wilmott.com/ are very good for picking up general knowledge and careers advice. There are some very helpful people, but unfortunately there's a sizeable fraction of insufferable arrogant d*ckheads there too.


Edit: There's one course in DCU which is becoming infamous here, it's on probability. Seems to have a very high failure rate. Can't name names though I'm afraid.

the_wheel_turns

Two of my friends from honours leaving cert maths are now on that course in DCU.

They both got A1s, but neither of them had studied probability (as the teacher didn't teach it!), so they started from scratch this last year. They're both genii at maths...they tell me they love it, but from what i hear, it's all maths, maths, maths.

How is your maths in general?

If it's up to the A or B standard, my guess would be that you shouldn't have a problem.:)

Nappy

Hey,

Im going into 2nd year of the dcu course, If you really enjoy maths you'll have no problem with the probability side of things. Its a great course and all maths geeks love it. The first 2 years is just an introduction to some basic theory, its in the 3rd and 4th when you concentrate on more in depth mathematics but even then you are allowed choose which route you take. Good luck with cao!!

Fince

thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

the_wheel_turns wrote: »

How is your maths in general?

If it's up to the A or B standard, my guess would be that you shouldn't have a problem.:)

got the results yesterday. A1 in maths, B2 in applied maths. 50 points to spare for the actuary course in dcu which is my first choice. delighted overall.

Fremen

Congratulations mate. There will be a jump in difficulty but if you managed the A1 you should be able to deal with it.

Probability is one of the most interesting areas of maths (imho). You get some beautiful, surprising theorems relatively early on. Check out the Central limit theorem. It's a relatively young discipline too: it was only formalised in the 1930's, and it's still developing rapidly.
Best of luck with the studies.

DJDC

Stochastic Calculus for Finance: Volumes I and II (Shreve) (very good, doesn't assume much knowledge)
Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus (Karatzas and Shreve)
Probability Essentials (Jacod and Protter)
Probability with Martingales (Williams)

Agree these are the foundations rocks of stochastic calculus. I did an MSc on this stuff after an engineering background and A1 in LC maths and have to say it topped anything I'd done before in terms of difficulty. But I never had a course in measure theory so often felt I was trying to build a house on a foundation of sand. So I'd recommed before you start the above books really get to know measure theory and probability theory. Know your expectation theory inside out etc

the_wheel_turns

Fince wrote: »

got the results yesterday. A1 in maths, B2 in applied maths. 50 points to spare for the actuary course in dcu which is my first choice. delighted overall.

very well done

an A1 in maths is not easy - you'll enjoy the course!