actuary

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun someone versed in the collection and interpretation of numerical data (especially someone who uses statistics to calculate insurance premiums)

From Latin āctuārius (“copyist, account-keeper”), from āctus (“public business”); see actuarius.

An insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables and the government's snake tables and tell you within sixpence how much it would be worth to insure a man against death by snake-bite there. — Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Mark Twain
HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon--by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you--amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. — The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce
It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of no arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all calculation, and went dead against any table of probabilities that any Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. — Hard Times, Charles Dickens

statistician

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