Steve Buissinne, Calculator Calculation Insurance 7/9/2014 via Pixabay Public Domain Distribution License
Note: Since Cherney is an actuary that works for a company, she doesn't really have "works" or "publications" per say, but she has recounted some of the work that she has done for her company. These will be the placeholders for the publications because, in essence her work and Laetsch's (professor) publications symbolize the same things.
The Interviewees and a summation of their publications
First is Dr. Theodore Laetsch of the University of Arizona Math Department. Laetsch hasn't been with the University of Arizona for his entire career, but I found works by him dating back to 1970. Laetsch has authored about many fields in math, but is probably most renowned and well-known for his research on relations and characteristics of eigenvalues (specific hidden values in matrices that can be found through one of the annoying math processes ever in college level Linear Algebra). Besides this work, Laetsch has also dabbled in specific mathematical properties such as lower bounds, boundary values, and nonlinear equations (just to name a few, listing them would be too much).
Kristen Cherney, as stated in the before blog post and above, is an actuary for the Scottsdale Insurance Company. Actuaries, in general, are workers that analyze risks and their potential consequences (positive or negative) for a specific company. Cherney is something called a "non-life" actuary. This category specializes in analyzing damages in properties, such as automobiles and homes.
Two Publications
Laetsch: Eigenvalues and Linear/Nonlinear Comparison
Cherney: No published works (see note above)
There is obviously a huge difference in the published works in that Cherney doesn't have any to speak of (since her job doesn't require her to do so) while Laetsch has had published works dating back to the 70s up until a few years ago (he is currently not researching anything). If there is a difference to speak of in Laetsch's research and Cherney's experience, however, its that Laetsch is looking at mathematics in a more abstract way while Cherney is applying these concepts first-hand in real-worked scenarios. Laetsch lays the blueprint was Cherney builds from the concpets.
Context
Laetsch's research articles and papers and Cherney's work experience both have one contextual thing in common; they both have a specific audience targeting specific events. Both the actuary and the professor write/work in order to inform their audience, whether it is a dollar amount on a claim or abstract relationships between numbers is the contextual difference. Overall the context of their work completely differs from one another. Cherney works in order to satisfy the general public by helping assign a dollar amount to potential risk in respect to material possessions for a set amount of time. Laetsch works in order to inform a small part for the math community his personal findings on the broad idea of mathematics that may be influential beyond the boundaries of a time limit. Everything besides the fact that Cherney and Laetsch do their work to inform is different from a contextual standpoint
Message & Purpose
As stated above, each person is trying to inform their audience of something. Take Laetsch's eigenvalue work for example. From page 6 to page 9, he shows a theorem in which infinite amount of cones may contain the "superstition" quality. Putting context aside, Laetsch is using this theorem in order to prove something to his audience rather than give his opinion. His theorem doesn't take his own personal opinion into account; it only spits out his findings in cold hard numbers. Cherney's work is the same way. Everything can be assigned a dollar amount, and Cherney can quantify this using her knowledge as an actuary. Both of them show their work with cold hard numbers, and their message tells their audience that its difficult to argue against that sort of language. Furthermore, both of them achieve their purpose in the same way. Laetsch uses cold hard number to prove his theorem are correct, while Cherney uses cold hard numbers in order to prove that certain material items can be replaced/fixed through a certain dollar amount.
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