Developed from the Second International Congress on Actuarial Science and Quantitative Finance, this volume showcases the latest progress in all theoretical and empirical aspects of actuarial science and quantitative finance. Held at the Universidad de Cartagena in Cartegena, Colombia in June 2016, the conference emphasized relations between industry and academia and provided a platform for practitioners to discuss problems arising from the financial and insurance industries in the Andean and Caribbean regions. Based on invited lectures as well as carefully selected papers, these proceedings address topics such as statistical techniques in finance and actuarial science, portfolio management, risk theory, derivative valuation and economics of insurance.

With an emphasis on problem solving, this book introduces the basic principles and fundamental concepts of computational modeling. It emphasizes reasoning and conceptualizing problems, the elementary mathematical modeling, and the implementation using computing concepts and principles. Examples are included that demonstrate the computation and visualization of the implemented models. The author provides case studies, along with an overview of computational models and their development. The first part of the text presents the basic concepts of models and techniques for designing and implementing problem solutions. It applies standard pseudo-code constructs and flowcharts for designing models. The second part covers model implementation with basic programming constructs using MATLAB, Octave, and FreeMat. Aimed at beginning students in computer science, mathematics, statistics, and engineering, Introduction to Elementary Computational Modeling: Essential Concepts, Principles, and Problem Solving focuses on fundamentals, helping the next generation of scientists and engineers hone their problem solving skills.