From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Avraham.
|
Gamma distribution—Classic loss severity distribution
[edit] Occupation
I am a reinsurance casualty actuary.
[edit] Maintenance
Articles I attempt to maintain
[edit] Wikipedia Philosophy
[edit] Editing
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.
[edit] Sources
I am also a very strong believer in having sources in articles, and quoting them. 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.
[edit] Updating references
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] and Anti-Zionism [2].
[edit] Thoughts on sysop and b'crat nominations
Over my time here in Wikipedia, as an editor and then an admin, I think I have finally crystallized my thoughts on RFA's and RFB's. In a nutshell, a request for adminship/bureaucratship is a request for the community to comment on the judgement and trustworthiness of the individual under discussion. Do we feel that the candidate will uphold wiki policy and guidelines where they exist, and will make reasoned decisions where policy and guideline is vague.
Wikipedia seems to have a tendency to regress to number counting and cold statistical analysis when faced with difficult decisions. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 79 for a prime example, although there are many others. Personally, I think that is an error. Anything that can be relegated to nothing more than bean-counting can, and should, be handed off to bots. We have admins and bureaucrats in Wikipedia because there are times we need a human being to make a decision. Usually, those times are when the decision will be unpopular. When we opine on RfA's, RfB's, and ArbCom elections, we are actually saying "we trust so-and-so's judgement, and are willing to allow him or her to make the difficult decisions."
Of course, egregious behavior needs to be addressed, which is why we have WP:ANI and WP:RfAR. Further, it is always a good idea for the admin or b'crat in question to discuss difficult issues beforehand, but that is not a requirement. Excercising judgement is what we ask our admins and b'crats to do, and if that judgement is excercised in a non-capricious, impartial, and reasoned fashion, we cannot fault them for that.
Ask yourself before you opine on a RFA/B/etc., "do I trust this person's judgement?" Then if you do, while you may disagree with it, and post vociferously why so when that occurs, remember that is why you placed your opinion on their nomination. And if you don't, then you should have acted on that during the nomination process.
[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 key is D233 20E7 0697 C3BC 4445 7D45 CBA0 3F46 785E A229
If you would like to have your key signed, either email me or leave a message on my talk page.
 |
|
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) |
 |
|
The Barnstar of Good Humor |
| For your attempt to cool down the discussion at [3] :-). --Kim Bruning 20:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC) |
 |
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
 |
|
The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar |
| I award you this barnstar for your tireless and effective vandal combat. Best regards. --Payple 15:40, 25 February 2007 (UTC) |
[edit] Userboxes
|
|
|
|
|
This user is a property/casualty actuary. |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[edit] Categories
