TIA’s Exam 1/P Blog

I’ve updated the study schedules for the February exam.  I’ve left a few breaks around Christmas and New Years, but obviously you should move those around for whenever you take breaks.  I am going to be around at Christmas, but will be far, far away from a computer from January 11th-17th (duly noted on the calendar in perhaps more detail than you want).  The new calendars will be up on the main page soon, but I’ll stick them here for the time being as well  Here is the standard schedule as well as a condensed schedule  that is shortened by 2 weeks.

While everyone has different tests now that 1/P is computer based, one thing that remains the same is that it is a hard test.  Usually less than 40% of the people pass, and that is sometimes closer to 30%.  If you fail the exam, try to remember that it is a hard test.  Also, we are happy to give free subscription renewals for people who fail and want to reuse the seminar for a second shot at the exam.  If you need one, please send an e-mail to customer service.  We may ask for proof that you are taking the exam again, but that is it.

We’ve added a 4th practice exam (see part E).  Unfortunately problems 9 and 10 were wrong in the original version.  We are working on putting up corrected versions, but the correct answers are .11 for #9 and .036 for #10.

The SOA has also increased the number of sample problems in the 2008 syllabus: see http://www.soa.org/files/pdf/edu-2008-spring-exam-p.pdf for the updated syllabus and links.  There are 3 new problems, and we are also adding copies of them with solutions in Part E.

I’ve added a collection of general problems on discrete probability from some old Course 110 exams (Course 110 was the probability exam two syllabus changes ago). These problems won’t go up on the main page until I am done with the solutions, and I often find some minor typos when working on the solutions, but here is a draft if you want to work on them now: Discrete Problems. For many of these problems, I have a copy of the solutions and not the original exam, so the questions are my attempt to reconstruct the original problem.

I’ve made a recommended study schedule, as well as a shortened version that is a couple weeks shorter, and also written some general tips about using the seminar. These will be up on the main webpage shortly, but in the mean time, here are the the files for both the Condensed Schedule and the Standard Schedule, as well as an FAQ.

Now that the first sitting of the exam has come and gone, it is time to start getting ready for the November exam.  The bulk of the content of the seminar is remaining the same, but I will be adding more practice problems and exams, and going into more detail on a couple of topics.  In order to let you know what the changes are, I will be making roughly weekly blog updates with what is new.  I will mostly be adding stuff on weekends, and so I am going to try to make the blog updates on Sundays.

This coming weekend (Labor Day weekend), I am going to add a revised schedule for the November exam, plus some general tips for how to get the most out of the seminar.  You should always feel free to e-mail me with questions–the more interactive you make the seminar, the more you will get out of it.

The set of old exam problems formerly known as the SOA 123 now has 124 problems (although question 124 was only added on some copies of it, one of which is http://www.casact.org/admissions/studytools/exam1/P-09-07QS.pdf )  It seems a little curious that they would add exactly one extra question, so I recommend making sure that you know how to do this one.

I have recently increased the number of review lessons, and have included a solution to the new sample problem in lesson E.1.5.  I’ve also added alternate solutions to questions 14 and 21 of Practice Exam #2.

I have switched the order of sections C.3 and C.4. There are a couple of reasons for this: First, the distributions in what is becoming C.3 (the uniform, exponential, and gamma) are heavily tested on the exam and I want to move up this important section; Second, some of the material in the new C.3 is useful in the problems for the new C.4, while the opposite isn’t true. In addition, I am adding a subsection on the uniform distribution to the new C.3. These changes went through late last night (6/20).  I’ve checked most of the videos to make sure that they are in the right place, but if you find something out of order let me know.

As you have probably noticed, there are a lot of advantages of on online video seminar compared to a traditional classroom. At the same time, there are also a lot of disadvantages. In a classroom, I can see your reactions and use that to find out when people are confused. I can’t do that online, so you need to be more aggressive about asking me questions. In a classroom you can also benefit from other people’s questions, but it is harder to do that online when you can’t hear each others questions. One way that I am trying to overcome that problem is to update the files in response to your questions. For example, I added some alternate solutions to A.4 # 4 in response to a question about the problem.

I am also correcting mistakes as people point them out to me. This means that if you find a mistake in a .pdf file, then I probably don’t yet know about it. Please let me know about these mistakes as you find them even if they seem minor to you so that I can fix them. The most important corrections will be included in the errata page.

As a final note, don’t forget that the solutions to the problems are available on our alternate sites tiavideos1 and tiavideos2.

The SOA and CAS have created beanactuary.org, which has a lot of basic information about the exam that you should know about.  In particular, it includes the exam rules.  You should also know about this study note that was written for the exam.  The study note is the only part of the syllabus that is labeled as “required” reading, as all of the text books on the syllabus are only recommended, so I think it is important that you read it.  The exam writers always ask some questions that are on material in this study note that are not found in most of the other readings (such as the coefficient of variation).  I will try to point these out during the lessons, but it is still worth looking at the source.