Two Medford Leas residents, Franklin Blair and Matthew Rodermund, are actuaries. The present tense is appropriate because, although retired, each remains a member of his professional society. It is those societies, not the nature of an individual‘s occupation, that bestows on him the designation of actuary. Admission to the professional societies requires passing a series of rigorous examinations.

　　But what in the world is an actuary? Before that question is answered, here are a few definitions, and characterizations, that have surfaced over a long period of years from outside the profession:
　　An actuary is a place where they bury dead actors.
　　An actuary is what you get when you cross a computer with a gypsy fortune teller.

　　A computer is an actuary with a heart.
　　An actuary is one whose main object is to justify by reason a course of action adopted in error.

　　And the classic definition: An actuary is a person who can pursue a straight line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.
Seriously, one of the most accepted definitions is that an actuary is one trained in evaluating the current financial implications of future contingent events.

　　But that definition is pretty fancy. Almost all actuaries are in insurance,so a simple definition is that an actuary is a mathematician dealing with probabilities in the insurance business.

　　A Fellow of the Society of Actuaries normally spends his career in life insurance. His principal functions are to calculate the probabilities of when people will die and, from those, to calculate rates and establish reserve funds to enable a company to pay the proceeds of life insurance policies and to pay annuities and pensions. A life actuary also would calculate, for example, the funds to be held by a community like Medford Leas to meet its obligations to its residents. Such calculations would be based in part on the expected average mortality of the residents.

　　A Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society normally deals with insurance other than life, e.g., automobile, workers‘ compensation, fire, windstorm, ocean marine, bonding, aviation, and (perhaps the most important) liability—the responsibility to recompense for injuries or damages suffered by others than the insured because of the insured‘s negligence.

　　A casualty actuary‘s principal functions are similar to those of a life actuary, except that the casualty actuary calculates the probability of accidents or loss occurrences and their severities. He also sets the rates that establish reserve funds to pay such losses. In addition, he estimates the probable cost of losses not yet reported but covered under policies long expired. An example would be a medical malpractice loss that develops many years after the original medical procedure.

　　The foregoing descriptions of actuarial functions, though over-simplified, should convey the general idea. However, they don‘t suggest the opportunities actuaries get, because of their overall knowledge of the business, to enter into general administration and executive positions, and into areas like investments, risk selection, and marketing. Almost all paths in the insurance world are open to actuaries.

　　Someone once said that an actuary is a guy who, if he enters a revolving door behind you, comes out ahead of you. It seldom happens.