Michael Schmuker " All models are wrong, but some models are useful. " – George E. P. Box (1979)

Guaranteed Annuity Options (GAOs) are options available to holders of certain pension policies. Under these contracts, policyholders contribute premiums into a fund managed by the insurer. At retirement, the policyholders buy life annuities at a guaranteed rate provided by the original insurer, or annuitize with another insurer. If the guaranteed annuity rates are better than the prevailing rat...

This article assesses insurance uptake in three community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes located in rural parts of two of India's poorest states and offered through women's self-help groups (SHGs). We examine what drives uptake, the degree of inclusive practices of the schemes and the influence of health status on enrolment. The most important finding is that a household's socio-economic...

We show that hydrodynamic modeling coupled to the synthesis of the plasma emission, taking into account the response of a given instrument, provides very useful information for the interpretation of ar-ing coronal loops observed in the X-ray band. We show how the same model are would appear very diierent if observed with Yohkoh SXT and TRACE and how our approach can help in providing a very det...

account of the several works that came from Digby's pen and, if one might judge from his Private Memoirs, his over-active brain. But even in this involved field of authorship one fails to find a solution to the strange uncertainties and contradictions that made Digby, Digby. Even the "powder of sympathy" in all its implications affords no explanation. Nevertheless, Sir Kenelm could not well be ...

1. INTRODUCTION. It has become a truism, at least among statisticians, that while statistics is a mathematical science, it is not a subfield of mathematics. We even have apho-risms to express some ways in which our science differs from mathematics. George Box: " All models are wrong, but some are useful. " George Cobb: " In mathematics, context obscures structure. In data analysis, context prov...

A popular approach to significance testing proposes to decide whether the given hypothesized statistical model is likely to be true (or false). Statistical decision theory provides a basis for this approach by requiring every significance test to make a decision about the truth of the hypothesis/model under consideration. Unfortunately, many interesting and useful models are obviously false (th...