Yeah--funny how I knew who it was without even looking!
("I heard that! That has to be Drew!")
Plan what to do, what to wear (you can never go wrong with a corset), and get ready for the next BuffistaCon: San Francisco, May 19-21, 2006! Everything else, go here! Swag!
Yeah--funny how I knew who it was without even looking!
("I heard that! That has to be Drew!")
See, Drew had to have been the kid who caught crap for that in class all the time. 90% of the time, it was a fair cop, but that 10% really burns.
t project much? Nah.
Yeah, it kinda comes with the territory. Calling my name is pretty much the easy guess.
Actuaries don't guess.
S'true. In the words of Dilbert, the only sensible way to make business decisions is to pluck numbers out of the air, call them assumptions, and calculate the net present value.
Of course, you have to use the right discount rate, otherwise it's meaningless.
It was actuaries that invented NPV? I hate you all.
It was actuaries that invented NPV?
I think the answer is "no." Actuaries do things like calculating NPV, except they incorporate probabilities of future events, like, say, someone dying in the case of a stream of retirement payments.
Using it is bad enough. Who made it up?
It's just a commonly used accounting... thingie. So I imagine it's been around for a long time.
What's so hard about NPV calculations, anyway? NPV and related functions are built into all spreadsheets and financial calculators. Is it comming up with the values you're gonna use in the NPV calculations?
Nah, it's not the concept, it's the application in IT project management that makes my eyes twitch. Doesn't stop me from wanting to raze the earth of its creators and perpetuators.
Actuaries use NPV constantly. It's one of the foundations of Actuarial Science (don't laugh).