College, the good ole days. I think everyone eventually reminisces about their college years. Wanting to go back to when they didn’t have too many adult responsibilities, the constant opportunity to meet new friends, and of course…the parties. During my search for a college, I happen to come across UCSB’s Best Kept Secret, their Actuary Program. At that time, I lived in Tucson and had just finished my Associates at Pima Community College. I was anxious to dive into a field related to math, computers, or engineering that would eventually turn into a great career. Low and behold – I found Actuarial Science as a great fit from the numerous articles that consistently ranked it as one of the “Top 10 Best Jobs”. Thus my search began for a college that had the Actuarial degree. Surprisingly UCSB at the time was the only one in the ENTIRE West Coast that had it. Although I may have a Master’s in Actuarial Science, my passion for data science is definitely what grew the most in my college years. I think this generated from the synergies between Data Science and Actuarial Science, as well as the awesome projects I got to partake while fulfilling my masters degree. Including internship projects during my time with Raytheon and Fireman’s Fund Insurance. One project I can proudly say won 1st Place at the 49th Annual Actuarial Research Conference and showed me the true power of Time Series Analysis (you can find a summary of the project here). In summary, among these projects, internships, and classes, my passion for the applicability of data science and actuarial science methods grew exponentially, and now I’m here to share old and new projects so that ‘us’ data geeks can learn from each other.
