January 10, 2022
The CAS Institute (iCAS) has updated the curriculum for Exam 3: Predictive Modeling — Methods and Techniques of the Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics (CSPA) credential in order to help streamline the studying process for exam takers. The curriculum changes will be effective for the Spring 2022 sitting. “Rather than requiring individual readings that may not appear to connect to other readings, we pared the reading list down to selected chapters from three sources, all of which are available for download at no charge,” said iCAS Exam 3 Committee Chair Louise Francis, FCAS, CSPA. Francis stated that the changes offer a “more unified and consistent ‘voice’” and are the result of several years of feedback on the exam process. The books are Introduction to Statistical Learning (ISL), by James, Witten, Hastie and Tibshirani , Modern Applied Statistics in S (MASS), by Venables and Ripley, and Computational Actuarial Science with R (CASR), by Arthur Charpentier.
Both ISLR and MASS are classic references and well-recognized in the predictive modeling community, while ISL has been a source since the beginning of the CSPA exams for some of the machine learning topics, explained Francis. She stated that while CASR is a less well-known reference in the predictive modeling community, it has a focus on practical insurance examples lacking in most predictive modeling texts. CASR also covers model selection — the consideration of several measures and objectives when selecting the final model(s) to deploy in a predictive modeling project. The committee hopes reducing the number of sources and thereby providing a more coherent flow of topics will encourage more people to pursue the exam.
Registration for the May 5 exam sitting will open soon.
