Two online papers in the same session: a theory paper in Word and a paper answered in R, combined 70:30.
Paper A
3 hours 20 minutes, a theory paper answered in Word
Paper B
1 hour 50 minutes, questions answered in R, results presented in Word
Final mark
70% Paper A and 30% Paper B, both sat in the same session, with one pass mark
What each paper asks
Paper A: questions of varying marks with full working, including short explanations and comments.
Paper B: questions of varying marks answered with R on data sets given with the paper, with the results and comments presented in Word.
About 20% of marks test knowledge, 65% application and 15% higher-order skills.
R for Paper B
You need R and RStudio installed and working before the exam. The exam body publishes a guide to installing them and the packages you need. Every Paper B question in this course comes with its own data set to download and the R code and output for its solution.
Try a question
Aims and stages of an analysis
Paper A style · Data analysis · Straightforward · 9 marks
A general insurer's analytics team has been asked to carry out three pieces of work using its motor portfolio data:
(a) summarising the average claim cost in each region last year for the annual report;
(b) using a random sample of 2,000 policies to assess whether the claim frequency of drivers aged under 25 differs from that of older drivers across the whole portfolio, with a measure of the uncertainty;
(c) forecasting the number of claims the insurer will receive next quarter.
(i)
State, with a reason, whether each of (a), (b) and (c) has a descriptive, an inferential or a predictive aim.
3 marks
(ii)
Describe the main stages the team should follow to carry out piece of work (c), from defining the problem to reporting the results.
4 marks
(iii)
Suggest two tools or techniques the team could use in the exploratory stage of piece of work (a), and say what each would show.