Course Resources

Resources

Here is a collection of resources that will be valuable throughout the week.

• • Datacamp, a free online tutoring service.

  • Loss Data Analytics, a free online textbook on the foundations of loss data.

  • Sample R code available at the companion site, Loss Data Analytics with R

    • Resources for the text are available through the Github landing page. For example, from this page you can download the entire book for free...

  • More information is available at the Open Actuarial Textbooks project website.

  • My regression textbook, Regression Modeling with Actuarial and Financial Applications.

    • • For resources associated with the textbook, please visit the Regression Modeling book web site. In particular, at this site you will find:

        • Book Data

    • R Installation Instructions

    • Sample R Code

    • R Resources

    • An online version is available for the next few months at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jfrees/regression/ the password (needed for Chaps 3 and on) is "@ S R M I" without quotes, without spaces.

  • Online Tutorial on Regression Modeling

  • The seminar also draws on resources from the series, Predictive Modeling Applications in Actuarial Science.

  • My research website, where follow-up material and presentations are available.

More on R

We will be using the (free) statistical package R actively in this seminar. Although not required, I recommend that you download the software onto your computer so that you can follow along with the examples.

The native capabilities of R are immensely enhanced through the use of add-ins called packages.

There are four ways that you can use R:

• • via the web with Datacamp or Sagecell - you don't even have to download R

  • native R interface, no bells and whistles

  • with R Commander, a great GUI for learning regression

  • with Rstudio, this (or something like it) is a free tool for developing code

R Commander is a graphical user interface (GUI) for R - this GUI speeds the learning time. It is also a (freely available) package in R. Here are a few more video clips on statistical software, RCmdr Video Clips.

R Studio provides a "development environment" for developing code. It is a great interface for learners of R (not necessarily regression) and is a tool that is preferred by people who use R extensively.