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Actuarially “Accurate” Oatmeal Raisin

Cookies
Posted on March 23, 2020 / Posted in Cookies / 104 comments / Raney
Baumgardner

A large problem within the actuarial science community is

how we define accuracy, or more specifically, what we
define as enough to be accurate in order to make choices
with consequences that hold gravity. In the day-to-day,
“close enough” is generally enough to make decisions;
within actuarial science, “close enough” shouldn’t be
enough, and yet this is often the mentality used in
implementing actuarial methods. To fully illustrate this
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issue, I decided to place it within the context of a simple,
day-to-day activity: Baking Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.
What You’ll Need:

o 1—1 ½ cups of unsalted butter, warmed

o 1—2 cups of light or dark brown sugar

o ¼—½ cups of granulated sugar

o 2—2 ½ large eggs

o 1—2 tbsp of pure vanilla extract

o ½ — 1 tbsp of molasses

o 1—1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour

o ¼ — 1 tsp of baking soda

o 1 ¼ —1 ½ tsp of ground cinnamon

o a dash of salt

o 3—4 cups of old-fashioned whole rolled oats

o 1—1 ¼ cups of raisins

o ½ —1 ¼ cups of chopped toasted walnuts

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Why You’ll Need Them:

1) Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream the

softened butter with both the brown and granulated sugars together on medium

speed until you deem it sufficiently smooth. This should take about 2 minutes or

so. Add the eggs and mix on high until satisfactorily combined (this should take

about 1 or so minutes). Add the vanilla extract, then the appropriate amount of

molasses, and mix on high until combined. Set this mixture aside for later.

2) Get a separate bowl. Whisk together: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add

this mixture to the wet ingredients from the previous step and mix on low until

appropriately combined. Next, slowly add in the oats, raisins, and walnuts to the

mixture on low speed. Chill the dough for 30-60 minutes in the refrigerator.

3) Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or

silicone baking mats.

4) Roll balls of dough and place roughly 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for

12-14 minutes until lightly browned on the sides. Remove from the oven and let

cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool

completely.
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5) Hopefully, enjoy!

How the Cookie Crumbles:

The whole point I’m trying to make here is that it’s hard to make
decisions and predict exact outcomes when you’re only given
intervals of marginal values. Baking is often thought of as an
exact science. Some professional pastry chefs will even calculate
weights to the hundredth of a milligram in order to control and
predict the end product they desire. This is not the case in this
context. Actuarially “Accurate” Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are treated
as if the true, necessary amounts of ingredients are unknown, and
thus what is needed has been projected through estimated
intervals that predict these amounts. It is supposed to simulate
the “good enough” mentality often found within actuarial
methods.
If the exact amount of vanilla you need is one tablespoon, and you
use two, there probably won’t be a noticeable difference with the
cookies you ended up with and the cookies you could’ve ended up
with. However, if you decided to use three eggs instead of two,
and you only used half a teaspoon of baking soda, and so on and
so forth, who knows how your cookies will turn out? And if we
can’t even bake cookies with this measure of uncertainty, then
how can we expect the insurance industry to effectively calculate
health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, and life
insurance rates with this very frame of mind?
I understand that it is easier to calculate the amount of granulated
sugar you need to bake oatmeal raisin cookies than it is to
calculate what the mortality rate will be for the US population ten
years from now, and that the latter inherently requires a degree of
uncertainty, but I feel the issue with how accuracy is classified
needed illumination. In the actuarial sciences, it is impossible to
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predict the future perfectly, but we should never stop trying.
“Good enough” is never “good enough.”