Actuarial studies and economics - computer programs (1 Viewer)

[kwokya]

Hi all

I am looking into buying a new laptop for university as my current laptop can't handle various programs (efficiently) with its poor 1GB ram. (It was only bought for the purposes of studies (Word, Excel, light weight easy to take around etc).

So now I am wondering what computer programs are involved in actuarial studies/economics just to play part in my laptop selection process

I am currently looking into Samsung's series 9 or Macbook air (windows 7 for both, not a big fan of w8).

 

[michaeljennings]

Hi all

I am looking into buying a new laptop for university as my current laptop can't handle various programs (efficiently) with its poor 1GB ram. (It was only bought for the purposes of studies (Word, Excel, light weight easy to take around etc).

So now I am wondering what computer programs are involved in actuarial studies/economics just to play part in my laptop selection process

I am currently looking into Samsung's series 9 or Macbook air (windows 7 for both, not a big fan of w8).

Not sure about economics but youll need excel and matlab for actuarial studies. I think in the past some of the actuarial courses used "R" but someone told me they arent using that anymore

 

[4025808]

statistics plays quite a large role in actuarial studies, so you may need to use SAS.

 

[kwokya]

Thanks guys

 

[4025808]

if you're gonna get windows 7, please don't buy a macbook air. Samsung series 9 is good but the premium you gotta pay for it ain't worth it, considering the specs.

for uni, go for something lightweight and with at least 6 hours of battery life. It should also be fast enough (4GB ram, core i5, 128GB SSD). I'd get my hands on the lenovo thinkpad X230 (with 9 cell battery) or lenovo thinkpad X1 carbon

 

[michaeljennings]

statistics plays quite a large role in actuarial studies, so you may need to use SAS.

We dont learn SAS at uni though,

Also you might not wanna get windows 7 if youre gonna install SAS. I use SAS at work and the laptop I was given uses windows 7 and SAS runs much slower on my comp than my colleagues, that goes for excel as well. Just yesterday I was copying a column of rows which had 70,000 rows from one spreadsheet to another and it took about 2 minutes, and when I told my colleague about it they thought I was being stupid so they gave it a go and it only took 3 seconds

 

[zhiying]

Pretty sure there's general ed courses on SAS

 

[zhiying]

I bring a Transformer Infinity to uni, basically just use to look at lecture slides and read the news

 

[zhiying]

If you're first year actuarial, all I used was Excel, and you can always do it at home the files are all uploaded

 

[4025808]

We dont learn SAS at uni though,

Also you might not wanna get windows 7 if youre gonna install SAS. I use SAS at work and the laptop I was given uses windows 7 and SAS runs much slower on my comp than my colleagues, that goes for excel as well. Just yesterday I was copying a column of rows which had 70,000 rows from one spreadsheet to another and it took about 2 minutes, and when I told my colleague about it they thought I was being stupid so they gave it a go and it only took 3 seconds

Well in actuarial/finance/statistics related jobs, there's going to be a good chance that you will using SAS in the workforce, so it's a good idea to learn it. MATH2871 is the SAS course offered at UNSW.

Well thing is, is it actually windows 7 that's making SAS slow? or could it be something else....
And what OS would you recommend for SAS anyway, if not windows 7?

 

[michaeljennings]

Well in actuarial/finance/statistics related jobs, there's going to be a good chance that you will using SAS in the workforce, so it's a good idea to learn it. MATH2871 is the SAS course offered at UNSW.

Well thing is, is it actually windows 7 that's making SAS slow? or could it be something else....
And what OS would you recommend for SAS anyway, if not windows 7?

Mmm yea i guess it cant hurt to learn but after speaking to colleagues about it they all say that the courses for SAS offered at uni etc arent all that helpful for the SAS you will learn at work. But that depends on the kind of work youre trying to do with SAS. Where I work its mainly data cleaning etc

Yeah when I first started people kept telling me that SAS wasnt the best to use on windows 7. Everyone else was meant to upgrade their laptops to windows 7 about two months ago but just about all of them have been putting it off

Pretty sure there's general ed courses on SAS

Yea i know I should have phrased my comment better, I was talking about the courses that were compulsory in our degree like actl2001 2002 etc