God’s Word: Another Brian
I’ve mentioned my friend Brian before. He’s a property-casualty actuary who lives outside of Atlanta now but we started our Actuarial careers together at the same company.
Actuarial students have to take a series of tests to become credentialed. Credentialed actuaries are what a company needs to meet certain legal requirements. Anyway, the tests start out very mathematically oriented and then branch into other disciplines like law, claims processing, investment, etc. before you finally get that credential.
When I was taking exams, the second set of exams was mathematical related and included topics like business statistics, the mathematics of interest and operation research. That last one, operation research, is a collection of mathematics applied to trying to figure out the best way of doing something. For example, let’s say you owned a moving company and needed to figure out how to pick up and deliver things from many locations in the most economical route (by the way, you may have heard that Fed Ex, I think, doesn’t let their drivers make left turns. This is a specific application of this kind of mathematics).
(Warning - unpleasant thought coming) Brian’s dad worked for a large canned juice company for years. His job was to sample the vats of juice before they were canned to ensure that the parts per thousand of things like mouse poo wouldn’t cause the entire batch to be tossed - another application of operation research.
The final application of operation research is queuing theory (mathematics of designing and being in a line). Have you ever been in a line at say McDonalds that wasn’t moving fast and wondered if you’d be better off moving to another line (the short answer is that it usually isn’t to your advantage to switch)? That is queuing theory.
Brian and I were going to a seminar to help study for this exam and requiring us to travel to a very large city. On the way, we were talking about how the lines of cars as traffic slowed down as we got closer to the large city was an application of queuing theory. He had made arrangements to pick up his then girlfriend from the airport as part of the trip.
Brian is usually a very calm and easy going man (even more so than I am) and we had just discussed how it usually isn’t in drivers advantage to change lanes as traffic slows down across all lanes. For whatever reason, Brian lost his cool and started yelling and screaming (and cursing) as traffic was jockeying to try to improve their position in the queue. So much so, that he missed his airport exit and had to drive around the airport to get back to that same exit.
”A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.“
Proverbs 15:18 ESV
”Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.“
Philippians 4:4-8 ESV
Not one of Brian’s better days but it sure made me a little apprehensive that I might say something that might trigger him after that.
