Name:
Dwight Bell
Email address:
dbell@nr.infi.net
URL of home page:
none.
Postal address:
5220 Huntscroft Court
Winston-Salem, NC 27106-4795
Phone:
(910) 748-1120
Affiliations:
AON Consulting
How did you hear about PCP?
Link from an on-line magazine article
Please take at least one page to describe your work
and how it might relate to PCP:
I'm a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and work as an actuary in the
benefits consulting area. My educational background is in math and I am
self-taught in many aspects of computer science.
An actuary is trained in statistical methods and also the interaction
between financial systems and behavior. That is we try to understand how a
system of rewards and penalties will impact people's actions which will
then cause changes in the rewards and penalties, and so on. The health
care field, where I specialize illustrates this problem. A particular
system of benefits and managed care controls will impact people's behavior
which determines the cost of benefits provided. In addition, the
characteristics of the plan provision may be relatively more attractive to
certain segments of a population causing selection effects on the plan's
experience.
I do not know how specifically how my work will relate to PCP but I feel
there are many areas of near or actual overlap. Both deal with the
self-organization and evolution within large systems with a goal to
understand the principles involved and to predict or guide future
evolution.
.... Dwight