There is a myth that actuaries are dull, torpid humourless types. In an attempt to disprove this (or not!), at the tail end of 2003 I organised a joke competition at work. The idea was to come up with the best original joke involving the actuarial world and Christmas (which frankly don't overlap that often). Despite having over two weeks to think of entries, the overall standard was weak. I intend to present here some of the best and the worst attempts at humour. Each joke was marked (quite objectively) in four categories: Originality, Actuarial content, Christmas content and Humour, with some bonus marks awarded on top, where appropriate.
I'll start with the winning joke, submitted by.... me. Not that the thing was fixed or anything, I was just best.
Q. Why did no errors occur during Baby Jesus's birth?
A. He was in a stable prophet environment!
This is actually a fairly technical joke, so I won't explain it here. Suffice to say, I won by a mile. However, I am nothing if not magnanimous, and so I gave the fine prize to the second place entry:
Q. How many actuaries does it take to change a light bulb
A. 1.1214061
This uses the following (market consistent) assumptions
Prob(buy wrong type of light) = 7.8132%
Prob(fall off chair) = 2.5673%
Prob(drop light) = 4.5671%
Prob(new light doesn't work) = 3.4237%
Prob(fuse all lights in house) = 0.4813%
Prob(electrocuted by new light) = 0.0201%
This is clearly very sad, and the gentleman who submitted it had completely forgotten to make it to do with Christmas and it still came second. This is what I have to deal with! I did however award 2 bonus points here, since earlier in the day of judging I had actually been changing a lightbulb for an actuarial friend. I required a small amount of help from her (she fetched me a stool to stand on), and she is only small, so probably contributed around 0.2 of a person to the total. Hence the so called "Joke" actually turned out to be quite accurate!
Two more (and feel free to stop reading here if you've had enough). First, a mid ranking joke:
Q. What role did the actuary play in the school nativity?
A. The actuary
And finally the worst joke:
Q. What do you get if you cross an actuary and a magician?
A. Don’t be stupid actuaries don’t make things disappear.
This not only forgot about Christmas, it failed to be funny or indeed make sense. It seems to have mixed up a "What do you get if you cross..." joke with some other joke format I can't quite make out. Answers on a postcard please.
I think in the end I have presented here sufficient evidence that actuaries are not dull, torpid humourless types, but I leave it to you, avid reader, to evaluate the above and redraw your own internal stereotypes.
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