Blog posts by: Patrick Lee

IFoA travel time to Fellowship: no evidence from the sample that actuarial science graduates/masters qualify any quicker

by Patrick Lee on 01 May 2023 in categories actuarial with tags lifelong learning ifoa maths

There is no evidence (at least from this sample of 307 Fellows) that actuarial science graduates or masters students qualify any quicker than students who do other degrees and don't do an actuarial science masters. This is likely to be of concern both to the IFoA and the universities offering such courses. Once again I urge the IFoA to be transparent and publish a detailed study using its full dataset.

The IFoA long qualification process: some evidence that it is slightly longer for women (by about half a year)

by Patrick Lee on 01 May 2023 in categories actuarial with tags lifelong learning ifoa maths

Here are the results split by sex in table form: Distribution of Fellowship Travel Time by Sex and graphically, first via histograms: Histograms of Fellowship travel time by sex and secondly by Box Whisker charts (the blue shaded boxes show the interquartile range, which really ought to be what the ...

Time to qualify as an IFoA actuary: how long it really takes in practice

by Patrick Lee on 01 May 2023 in categories actuarial with tags ifoa lifelong learning maths

A summary of the analysis I carried out on a sample of the 2020 to 2022 new qualifiers (Associates and Fellows) of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. Associate Travel time: median 5.54 years, mean 6.71 years. Fellow Travel time: median 6.63 years, mean 7.42 years.

IFoA Roulette, or "Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

by Patrick Lee on 01 May 2023 in categories actuarial with tags ifoa lifelong learning maths

Further to my previous article with an analysis of the time taken to qualify by recent (2020-2022) new Fellows and Associates of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, you can try a simulation of how long it might take you to qualify here.

How to check or save the Configuration app settings for an Azure app service

by Patrick Lee on 15 Feb 2023 in categories tech with tags Kudu Azure DevOps settings configuration

For security reasons, you should not be storing production setting values in source control. But this means that by default, you don't have your own backup of the values for your live, production settings. What if you want to store a copy of your settings (e.g. along with the artifacts) ...

EFCore Power Tools is useful in the migration from Entity Framework to Entity Framework Core

by Patrick Lee on 13 Feb 2023 in categories tech with tags .NET 7 migration Azure Entity Framework Core Entity Framework

I was able to migrate a legacy project using .net framework and entity framework to .NET 7 and EFCore relatively easily. EFCore Power Tools was very useful in doing a first draft of model code from the existing database.

This site updated to use .NET 7 rather than .NET 6

by Patrick Lee on 08 Feb 2023 in categories tech with tags .NET 7 migration AzureFunctions

Upgrading a .NET 6 to .NET 7 app service seems very straightforward. Upgrading Azure functions to .NET 7 looks to be a more significant change, and might require some investigation first.

A reminder that .NET 6 (or 7) code can work with Entity Framework 6.3.3 and later, although EF Core is better

by Patrick Lee on 08 Feb 2023 in categories tech with tags .NET 7 Azure legacy Entity Framework Core Entity Framework .NET 6

If your legacy code uses Entity Framework 6.3.3 or later, you don't necessarily need to move to Entity Framework Core at the same time that you move from .net framework 4.7/4.8 to .NET 6 or 7.

If you get TLS 1.0 or 1.1 error, one possibility might be that you are using an older app service that needs migrating to .NET 6 (or at least framework 4.8)

by Patrick Lee on 07 Feb 2023 in categories tech with tags .NET 7 .Net framework TLS Azure

One possible solution to a "You are using TLS version 1.0, 1.1 and/or 3DES cipher which are deprecated" error might be to upgrade any older app services that are using older versions of .net framework.

Microsoft LUIS apps: deprecated in favour of CLU and difficult to migrate, but still work! (for now)

by Patrick Lee on 07 Feb 2023 in categories tech with tags LUIS CLU natural language processing AI

Microsoft's Natural Language Processing LUIS apps seem to be deprecated in favour of CLU but are currently difficult to migrate. However the LUIS apps still seem to work - for now at least!

Next