SPEAKER: Mr Piet Maree
.
TITLE
Need for Statisticians, Actuaries and Data Scientists
ABSTRACT
A question that comes up regularly when doing analytics, or ‘data science’, is do you need statisticians or data scientists or maybe even an actuary to do the job? What is a “data scientist” in the first place? The talk will cover what it means to work with a diverse group of analytically minded people from different technical backgrounds. It will cover ideas on what it takes to put together an analytics team in a large organisation, the skill sets required and how to get the most out of a diverse group of people like Statisticians, Actuaries and Data Scientists. Some examples of business problems will be discussed to illustrate how different skills and infrastructure fit together to solve real life problems.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Before finding his ideal job as an actuary at Discovery Health, Piet worked in the exciting world of
Healthcare Reinsurance at Hannover Life Re, did a year of consulting work at Deloitte, and took a five year sabbatical from the actuarial profession to study architecture (the bricks and mortar kind) at the University of Pretoria.
At Hannover, Piet successfully managed a portfolio of healthcare insurance clients throughout Eastern Africa, South Africa and neighbouring countries.
His job at Discovery exposed him to the finer arts of PowerPoint presentations, fraud analytics, health insurance in China, and more recently working with a talented group of data scientists and actuaries that are passionate about extracting meaning from data to drive valuable business decisions.
In his free time, Piet loves to play correspondence chess when not competing in Ironman triathlons.