Open Actuarial Textbooks Project Goal

The goal is to have the actuarial community author our textbooks in a collaborative fashion. The text Loss Data Analytics represents our first book.

Life Contingencies: The Mathematics, Statistics, and Economics of Life Insurance

This respository is focused on a new text, currently titled Life Contingencies: The Mathematics, Statistics, and Economics of Life Insurance. A summary of the book is available online, code for the book is available above.

DOWNLOAD AND EDIT A LOCAL COPY OF THE BOOK

1. Optional - Get reasonably recent versions of R and Rstudio. Sometimes, there can be conflicts if you are running very old versions these products. (Probably best to do this step at a later stage in case you run into problems that you can't debug.)
2. Optional - Update packages. We have discovered conflicts between some of the advanced graphics/RGL and javascript in chapter 3 with old versions of some packages. Surprisingly, the one exception is the package bookdown. We found that an old version (0.21) works best. So, use this code:
   • require(devtools)
   • install_version("bookdown", version = "0.21", repos = "http://cran.us.r-project.org")
3. Download a copy of the book. Go to Github, https://github.com/OpenActTextDev/LifeCon, hit the green "Code" button, download a .zip file and uncompress it.
4. Open R-studio, go to "File==>Open Project". From the folder you just downloaded and uncompressed, select "LifeCon.Rproj".
5. In R studio, open the file "PackagesLifeCon.Rmd" (but do not knit it). These are the packages that will be called when you compile the book, so install them now if needed.
6. In R-studio, go to the upper right tab, hit "Build". This brings up a "Build Book" tab. Click the down arrow to the right and select "bookdown::gitbook". This starts the compile process.
7. Upon successful compile, you should see a preview of the book. If it gets lost, go to the "docs" subfolder and open "index.html" in a browser, hopefully you see the compiled book.
8. As you edit the book, go to the file "_bookdown.yml". This allows you to select the .Rmd files (and the order) that you wish to appear in the book.

UPLOAD YOUR BOOK VERSION TO GITHUB

1. Start by getting a (free) Github account.
   • Install Git on your local machine (https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git).
   • Get a personal access token that you will need when you communicate between Rstudio and Github. (https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/creating-a-personal-access-token)
2. We are going to follow the process documented at https://happygitwithr.com/existing-github-first.html, so you might want to look over this excellent resource before beginning.
3. 16.1 Make a repo on GitHub
   • Go to https://github.com and make sure you are logged in.
   • Click the green “New repository” button. Or, if you are on your own profile page, click on “Repositories”, then click the green “New” button.
   • Pick a repository name that actually reminds you what the project is about! But try to be concise.
   • Public = YES Initialize this repository with a README
   • Click the big green button “Create repository.”
   • Copy the HTTPS clone URL to your clipboard via the green “Clone or Download” button.
4. In R-studio, open a new project.
   • "File==>New Project==>Version Control==>Git". In the “repository URL” paste the URL of your new GitHub repository. It will be something like this https://github.com/jennybc/myrepo.git.
5. Close R studio and copy the existing project onto the one you just created.
6. Open R studio with the newly created project. I have had a little trouble getting the first commit done on my machine. So, I have to do it by hand:
   • Tools==>Shell
   • git status
   • rm -f .git/index.lock
   • git add . --all (The rm command is from: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38004148/another-git-process-seems-to-be-running-in-this-repository)
7. Now, we can leave the shell
   • Git tab ==> Commit ==>Provide a short descriptive name
   • Then hit the push (up arrow). When it asks for authentication, put in your Github name. Use the personal access token instead of the Github password. Hopefully everything goes up to Github.
8. Finally to get the world to see your page:
   • Settings ==> GitHub pages ==>Check it out here! ==>
   • Source Change "None" to "main". Change "/root" to "/docs" . Then save.

May need to wait a couple minutes. Then, you can view your new book at, for example, https://ewfreesres.github.io/TestActMatch/

Loss Data Analytics

Book Description

Loss Data Analytics is be an interactive, online, freely available text.

• The online version contains many interactive objects (quizzes, computer demonstrations, interactive graphs, video, and the like) to promote deeper learning.
• A subset of the book is available for offline reading in pdf and EPUB formats.
• The online text will be available in multiple languages to promote access to a worldwide audience.

To see our progress, a current version of the book is available at Online Version

Github Resources

GitHub provides a natural development environment to achieve this goal.

• The more stable version is available through the "Production" Github Landing Site - designed for students and classes.
• The more frequently updated version is available through the first "Development" Github Landing Site - designed for instructors and developers.
• We are now porting resources to a newer, second "Development" Github center - designed for instructors and developers.

Code, data, offline versions and more are available through these portals.

Other Resources

See the Open Actuarial Textbooks Project Site for more information about this project.