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Gamma distribution—Classic loss severity distribution
[edit] Occupation
I am a reinsurance casualty actuary.
[edit] Maintenance
Articles I attempt to maintain
[edit] Wikipedia Philosophy
My philosophy in Wikipedia mirrors that which I use in my occupation: "No data is better than garbage data." In reinsurance, you know you cannot extrapolate too much from nothing; but given something, one is tempted to build entire aggregate loss models. Same with Wikipedia; I would rather have a smaller set of useful, verifiable (and verified), clean articles than a large set of borderline trash. This does not mean I prefer to throw out the baby with the bathwater; if an article is sufficiently notable, and has room for improvement, it should be kept. Unfortunately, in my experience, I have found that to be the exception, and not the rule. For every article like V. Kalyanasundaram, there are a hundred others that are blatant advertisement, or {{db-bio}}'s.
I am also a very strong believer in having sources in articles, and quoting them, preferably in in-line Harvard citation format. When an article is unsourced, by nature it is suspect. If it can point to a verifiable source, it is as if it says "Go ahead, check it out." We need more articles of the latter type. There are too many unsourced, or poorly sourced articles that people may take for real research on Wikipedia.
One of my favorite wiki-pastimes is to find an article which is poorly referenced, and to update it with proper, and perhaps better, citations, like St. Petersburg paradox [1]
[edit] OpenPGP
If a key is signed by this one, it means that I have performed an encrypted challenge-response with the user
The fingerprint of this A829 A932 095F 08ED 6CE4 5690 AF6E B6C9 A8A2 E975
If you would like to have your key signed, email me leave a message on my talk page.
[edit] Barnstars
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The Working Man's Barnstar |
| Your dedication to the nightmarish task of updating the sources on circumcision is positively stunning. Hence this barnstar. Jakew 20:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC) |
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The Barnstar of Good Humor |
| For your attempt to cool down the discussion at [2] :-). --Kim Bruning 20:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC) |
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The Random-Acts-of-Kindness Barnstar |
| When I changed user names and was inadvertantly locked out of editting, you tried over and over to help me over a sustained period of time until final success. I really appreciate it. Thank you. LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 04:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC) |
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The Random-Acts-of-Kindness Barnstar |
| Thanks for going to bat for my little effort re: Deborah Frisch. Sinsblog 14:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC) |
[edit] Userboxes
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This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages. |
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[edit] Categories
