Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Lecturer
Xian Zhou
Contact via email
Room 607, 4 Eastern Road
Tue 3-4pm
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Credit points |
Credit points
3
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Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
ACST255 and STAT272
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Corequisites |
Corequisites
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Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
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Unit description |
Unit description
This unit develops probabilistic and statistical models for survival and death, health and sickness, loss and claims, and other insurance related problems. Students will learn sophisticated mathematical and statistical methods to estimate lifetime distributions and model parameters; evaluate estimation quality and errors; assess the effects of covariates and risk factors; and test the appropriateness and validity of the models. Survival analysis for censored and truncated data, Cox proportional hazards models with covariates, and Markov processes for multiple state models, will be discussed and studied in details. Students gaining a grade of credit or higher in both ACST358 and ACST359 are eligible for exemption from subject CT4 of the professional exams of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia.
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Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
Extensions and penalties on coursework assessment tasks
• Tasks 10% or less – No extensions will be granted. Students who have not submitted the task prior to the deadline will be awarded a mark of 0 for the task, except for cases in which an application for special consideration is made and approved.
• Tasks above 10% - No extensions will be granted. There will be a deduction of 10% of the total available marks made from the total awarded mark for each 24 hour period or part thereof that the submission is late (for example, 25 hours late in submission – 20% penalty). This penalty does not apply for cases in which an application for special consideration is made and approved. No submission will be accepted after solutions have been posted.
Open-book final examination
• The final examination will be open-book in the sense that students can bring in any materials written or printed on paper with any size and number of pages.
Gradebook
• It is the responsibility of students to view their marks for each within session assessment on iLearn within 20 working days of posting. If there are any discrepancies, students must contact the unit convenor immediately. Failure to do so will mean that queries received after the release of final results regarding assessment marks (not including the final exam mark) will not be addressed.
• Assessment criteria for all assessment tasks will be provided on the unit iLearn site.
Supplementary exams
• Information regarding supplementary exams, including dates, is available at: http://www.businessandeconomics.mq.edu.au/current_students/undergraduate/how_do_i/special_consideration
Name | Weighting | Hurdle | Due |
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Quiz | 5% | No | 19/03/2019 |
Assignment 1 | 20% | No | 01/05/2019 |
Assignment 2 | 15% | No | 05/06/2019 |
Final Exam | 60% | No | Examination Period |
Due: 19/03/2019
Weighting: 5%
Non-invigilated quiz with multiple-choice questions
Due: 01/05/2019
Weighting: 20%
Problem-solving questions requiring detailed solutions
Due: 05/06/2019
Weighting: 15%
True-False questions requiring explanations
Due: Examination Period
Weighting: 60%
Problem-solving questions requiring detailed solutions
Classes
• This unit is taught through 3 hours of lectures and 1 hour of tutorials per week.
• The timetable for classes can be found on the University web site at: http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au/
• Tutorials start in Week 2.
Unit Web Page
• The web page for this unit can be found at: http://ilearn.mq.edu.au
Technology Used and required
• You will need access to the internet to obtain course information and download teaching materials from the unit website.
• It is your responsibility to check the unit website regularly to make sure that you are upto-date with the information for the unit.
Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials
• Lecture Notes are the required materials and will be posted on the website before the lectures.
• The main additional reading materials are the ActEd CT4 notes. This will also be used as background reading for ACST359/819.
Week 1: Principle of actuarial modelling; Probability models
Week 2: Survival analysis; Estimation of survival distributions
Week 3: Estimation of survival distributions; Variance estimation
Week 4: Variance estimation and confidence intervals
Week 5: Cox proportional hazards models
Week 6: Cox proportional hazards models; Stochastic processes
Week 7: Markov chains
Week 8: Markov chains; Markov jump processes; Assignment 1
Week 9: Markov jump processes
Week 10: Markov jump processes; Applications of Markov processes
Week 11: Applications of Markov processes
Week 12: Applications of Markov processes; Assignment 2
Week 13: Revision
Note: This is only a tentative schedule. The actual schedule will be adjusted from time to time in accordance with the progress of lectures.
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Undergraduate students seeking more policy resources can visit the Student Policy Gateway (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/student-policy-gateway). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.
If you would like to see all the policies relevant to Learning and Teaching visit Policy Central (https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policy-central).
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Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/
Learning Skills (mq.edu.au/learningskills) provides academic writing resources and study strategies to improve your marks and take control of your study.
Students with a disability are encouraged to contact the Disability Service who can provide appropriate help with any issues that arise during their studies.
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When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.
Our graduates will take with them the intellectual development, depth and breadth of knowledge, scholarly understanding, and specific subject content in their chosen fields to make them competent and confident in their subject or profession. They will be able to demonstrate, where relevant, professional technical competence and meet professional standards. They will be able to articulate the structure of knowledge of their discipline, be able to adapt discipline-specific knowledge to novel situations, and be able to contribute from their discipline to inter-disciplinary solutions to problems.
This graduate capability is supported by:
We want our graduates to be capable of reasoning, questioning and analysing, and to integrate and synthesise learning and knowledge from a range of sources and environments; to be able to critique constraints, assumptions and limitations; to be able to think independently and systemically in relation to scholarly activity, in the workplace, and in the world. We want them to have a level of scientific and information technology literacy.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Our graduates should be capable of researching; of analysing, and interpreting and assessing data and information in various forms; of drawing connections across fields of knowledge; and they should be able to relate their knowledge to complex situations at work or in the world, in order to diagnose and solve problems. We want them to have the confidence to take the initiative in doing so, within an awareness of their own limitations.
This graduate capability is supported by: