Actuarial Word Clouds

We all know the saying 'one picture is worth a thousand words'....

What if that picture also contained words itself?
Such a Word-Picture must be worth at least a million words.....

What if that Word-Picture is also an Actuarial-Word-Picture?
This kind of picture must be worth a billion words!

Enough balderdash..., there's a fabulous online application, called Wordle, to empower and spice up your traditional power-point presentations.

Wordle
Wordle uses words and their frequency to turn them into a Word-Cloud - or better - a Word-Picture.

You may use Wordle on any group of words or even a RSS-feed.
So in fact Wordle creates a weighted summarized and visualized impression of what you, your document or your employer is. 

Here are some examples of Wordle voor the RSS pages of two actuarial giants....

Mercer
Let's start with Mercer:

Towers Watson
And now for some Towers Watson's...

 
Actuary Info
Let's conclude with an example of a more modest and smaller actuarial giant: Actuary Info

Presentation Tip
Next time you give a presentation,  instead of summing up the standard dry bullet points, replace them by a Wordle cloud.

Your audience will be spellbound , 'turn their head', 'look for expected words' and 'immediately grasp the relative size of the issues mentioned'. All resulting in (1) you - the presenter - will have much more attention and (2) the facts shown on your slides will be longer remembered, because the are 'your visualized words' and therefore will be better memorised...

An AON Example...
Let's end with a simple example from AON's 2010 Risk Survey:

I. Traditional (PPT) Slide Presentation

Risk Quantification Tools Used (2010)

(to measure demonstrable Value Received from ERM Efforts)

• Qualitative tools 59%
• Industry benchmarks 34%
• Earnings/Cash flow/Value at Risk 27%
• No use of risk quantification in ERM process 23%
• Actuarial analysis 13%
• Stochastic/Monte Carlo simulation 13%
• Not specified 7%

II. Wordle Presentation

Now..., get your head in the 'Actuarial Word Clouds' an have even more success with Wordle!!!

- Download: AON Risk Survey (2010)
- Wordle