Over the years, I've done my fair share of pre-employment assessments. The one I did for my last job was the most in depth by far. During this evening's job search efforts, I came across one of the most diabolical. It starts off easy enough with the standard "which of the two following statements best describes you? A) I like to lay naked on a fire ant mound slathered in honey and confectioners sugar. or B) I live to cauterize my intestines with Thai ghost peppers with a hot cinnamon schnapps chaser." As you would expect, they ask you the same questions a couple of different ways to calibrate your responses.
Then, they turn the knob up to eleven.
Math and logic word problems...against the clock.
You have three minutes to read, analyze and calculate the correct answer, you can use scratch paper, a calculator, an abacus or a three year old. No cheating.
Most of them I did okay on. I think. The one that killed me went something like this (not exactly like this since I don't want to get in trouble with someone for sharing their intellectual property).
"Your company has 5 employees that buy widgets. Beavis buys 450 widgets at a $1 more than Cornholio pays. Butthead buys 650 widgets for $0.50 less than Cornholio pays but $0.75 more than Gribble pays. Gribble pays $1.00 more than Boomhauer does but buys 600 widgets. Cornholio buys 500 widgets and pays the princely sum of $5.25 per widget. Who spent the most money buying widgets?"
I locked up on that one scratching it out on paper. By the time I had it set up and was making headway, the clock was down to 7 seconds. Doh!!! Pick an answer and hope it's write. I checked myself later...nope...got it wrong. Just another minute, and I could have narrowed it down. But, they are timing this for a reason. How does this monkey perform under pressure and deadlines.
This monkey thinks this is a stupid shell game designed by MBAs who think solving math and logic problems against a clock is a useful metric.
Showing posts with label Math Geekery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Math Geekery. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Insider's Guide for Outsiders: Evil Insurance Companies
A co-worker forwarded the link to this news article. For those who can't be bothered to click a link, here's the short version:
76 year old man gets into an argument with his insurance agent over why his auto insurance was canceled. Man gets physically thrown out of agent's office. Man sues agent. Man wins judgment. Agent's representatives attempt to partially satisfy the judgment with 17 buckets of loose coins.
As my current boss commented, there's got to be more to this story.
Now, I will admit that I have been sorely tempted to do something like this more than once in my insurance career. The one thing stopping me has been that the hassle of getting that much coinage together and delivering same far outweighed any pleasure I might have received at making a difficult attorney's life more difficult. I'm sure others in my profession will agree.
I bring this up because of a (probable spam) comment I received on my relatively recent post on litigation. The commenter stated: "Great information! Insurance companies don't like to pay claims and some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims. With this said, if you have a legitimate claim, you should expect to be treated fairly and expect the insurance company to honor the claim."
My response to the commenter was: "I'm not sure what you mean by "some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims", but I will say that claims people tend to be a jaded and suspicious lot by nature (it comes from too many dealings with sleazy lawyers and angry claimants). Insurance companies are in business to make money like every other business. As such, saying they don't like to pay claims is almost akin to saying the Pope is Catholic. Having said that, some companies have a well deserved reputation for being difficult and reluctant to pay claims while others are less difficult. Perhaps my next articles in the series will be on insurance companies and adjusters."
I thought I would take a moment and give a brief overview of the insurance business from the company perspective.
First, let's get one thing perfectly clear from the start: with very few exceptions, insurance companies are in business to make money. Any insurance company failing to make money for very long does not tend to stay in business for very long.
The primary vehicle for measuring the profitability of an insurance company is the loss ratio. In its purest form, the loss ratio is the total of all written premium collected divided by claims paid including expenses. There are two types of expenses: allocated loss adjustment expenses (A.L.A.E. for short though I've heard some people pronounce it as a word: "A-lay") and unallocated loss adjustment expenses (ULAE). ALAE is any expense that can be allocated to a specific claim file. The legal bill that pays for the attorney defending a specific lawsuit is ALAE as is private investigator, inspector, expert witness and other expenses when they arise out of a specific claim investigation. Adjuster salaries, office rent, electricity, phones, etc. are ULAE.
A loss ratio of 1.0 is break even. Loss ratios of greater than 1.0 mean a company is hemmorrhaging money, and loss ratios of less than 1.0 mean that the company should be profitable. It is theoretically possible for a company to have a 1.1 loss ratio and still turn a profit, but that feat requires successful return on investment of premium dollars which I may or may not discuss further. In my experience, it is rare to see a reported loss ratio below 0.50. The most profitable companies typically run a loss ratio in the .55 to .75 range. The majority of okay but financially profitable companies run ratios between .75 and .95. Companies having issues typically run loss ratios very close to or above 1.0. A recent example would be Fireman's Fund's dismal performance the last two years running with combined ratios (a combined ratio is the pure loss ratio including investment performance) of 1.294 (2012) and 1.036 (2013).
That's all so very nice and esoteric, but what does it mean?
To be honest, lots of things and nothing at all.
Underwriter and actuaries control one half of the equation (written premium) while the claims department controls most of the other half (losses paid and ALAE). Premium rates are set based on a variety of factors that are well beyond my limited math education and experience. Actuaries perform all sorts of calculations and review statistics (and goat entrails I'm sure) and analyze navels until they come up with a set of rates they think represents the rates that a given category of risk should pay. That's why teenage boys pay the highest rates for car insurance. Underwriters then stick their thumb in that pie and develop a set of underwriting guidelines that define the "appetite" for risk that the company wants to pursue. For instance, the last company I worked for prior to the one I am with now had a solid personal lines (auto and homeowner's insurance) and "middle market" appetite. They were content to pursue small to medium sized companies in a variety of industries, but they would steer away from anything too big or unique. Unique in the underwriting world = risky and hard to price.
Another driver of insurance premium rates is policyholder retention (or whatever the term de jour is). Basically, there is a finite number of people and/or companies out there. Most of them already have policies which forces the insurance industry to compete on price and service. Service is almost exclusively (but not completely) owned by the claims department. Underwriting sells a promise. Claims delivers on the promise. That leaves price. A company losing market share might choose to lower rates or increase its underwriting appetite or both in order to bring in more premium dollars, at the risk of increasing the loss ratio. A company seeing its loss ratio rise might choose to do the opposite, at the risk of losing market share. It's a very delicate balancing act.
That brings us to the loss/claims side of the equation. As mentioned a moment ago, service belongs to claims. There is a distinction here that needs to be mentioned (one I've mentioned before). When you see an ad for an insurance company on TV talking about fast claims service, they are talking about first party claims. A first party claim is one in which you the policyholder are making a claim for benefits to be paid to you under your policy. An example would be making a comprehensive or collision claim on your auto policy. A liability claim where someone else makes a claim on your policy for benefits to be paid to them arising from an accident caused by your negligence is a third party claim.
What difference does it make? Most states, if not all states, have some form of statutory or regulatory guidelines for how first party claims can/should be handled under pain of fine or penalty for failure to comply. As a result, the claims process for first party claims is pretty streamlined and efficient. Some companies still have field adjusters who will come to you; and, in some cases, they will even cut a check for the damages on the spot. Additionally, there is usually no requirement on a first party claim to prove legal liability as is required by the insuring agreement on a liability policy since a first party claim arises from contractual language as opposed to tort negligence theory. Prove that the contract was in effect and that the damages incurred are covered by said contract (which is usually self evident), and the check is in the mail.
Most of the time, when someone is griping about an insurance company, they are griping about the handling of a third party claim. As mentioned in a prior post, the time frames on a third party liability claim can go on for years. Most people anymore lose their patience and tempers after a few seconds. So, you can imagine how much fun third party claimants are to deal with when you deny their claims.
Now, as for the prevailing thought that adjusters look for reasons to deny a claim or that insurance companies don't like to pay claims, the short answer is that it depends.
Most individual insurance adjusters are hard working people trying to earn a living and do a good job. They have neither the authority nor do they receive the level of reward necessary to incentivise denying valid claims for no reason. The average adjuster, in my experience, is handling between 75 and 175 claims at any given time depending on the complexity of the mix. Most adjusters have very limited personal authority requiring management approval for settlements/reserves above certain amounts, coverage issues, etc. Most adjusters also know that denying a claim does not mean it goes away. In this litigious society, they know that it just means a lawsuit will be coming in soon and that file will be around a lot longer. If anything, there is a human nature tendency to find ways to PAY claims because settled files very rarely reopen, and adjusters have better things to do with their time than reopen files. As such, a permanently closed file is a happy file. Yes, there are individual adjusters that are jerks who are difficult to deal with. Pick any industry...you will find your share of jerks there too. The bottom line is that adjusters are people too subject to the same pressures and feelings as anyone else.
At the company level, there is not an insurance company in business today that has an official "smoking gun" document from senior management that says "look for ways to deny claims" or something to that effect. No one I am aware of is that stupid given the lengths to which bad faith lawyers will go to find such information. Now, will middle management do or say something stupid like that? Yes. I had an assistant VP of claims at a large, international insurance company tell me personally "I don't care if it's right. I just want it done." I explained to him that I had no intention of doing what he told me as I had no intention of explaining why such an unethical thing was done when my deposition would be taken in the inevitable bad faith lawsuit. His boss agreed with me after the fact. I still left that company pretty quickly thereafter though.
Will a company institute policies or procedures that make the claims process more difficult for everyone involved (adjuster and claimant alike)? Yep. Been there. Done that. Google "allstate colossus" for one such example. I've never worked for Allstate, but I did work for one company that also used Colossus for certain types of claims. I can attest that it is just like every other computer program in existence: garbage in, garbage out.
One consequence of the whole loss ratio analysis discussed above is the cyclical nature of claims settlements. When the loss ratio is high, the claims department gets pressure to "lower the loss ratio" or "reduce expenses". This can take the form of taking more cases in litigation to trial (which is counter intuitive since it involves incurring more expense) or settling more cases (which is also counter intuitive for obvious reasons). Taking more cases to trial is problematic for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the almost Byzantine nature of our legal process. Most adjusters hate to lose cases at trial. As such, they tend to recommend very few cases for trial and then only those that have legitimate, unresolvable disputes or those that they believe are "slam dunk" cases. I have sat in more than a few roundtables where I've told upper management in no uncertain terms that trying a particular case would be an epic mistake. Usually, they are smart enough to listen and the case eventually settles.
It should be noted that insurance companies don't just take premium dollars and dump them in an interest bearing checking account hoping everything balances at the end of the month. There is a whole side of the business controlled by accounting and the CFO that takes the money, invests it and hopefully scores a boatload of return on investment earnings in the process. Sometimes, that can blow up in their faces. AIG most notably went to the brink of oblivion just after the housing bubble burst in 2008 through over reliance on mortgage backed derivative investments. Hartford got splashed by that same bubble bursting for the same reasons but fared much better through a more diverse investment portfolio.
This is a pretty big topic that I am only scratching the surface of here, but I need to get back to work. If you are really that interested, you can dig into the mechanics of reserving and prior year development charges to present earnings, etc. That's homework for you CPA types.
In closing, your attorney is no better or worse a person than the adjuster for the insurance company. Treat them with the Golden Rule, and things will usually work out the way they are supposed to.
76 year old man gets into an argument with his insurance agent over why his auto insurance was canceled. Man gets physically thrown out of agent's office. Man sues agent. Man wins judgment. Agent's representatives attempt to partially satisfy the judgment with 17 buckets of loose coins.
As my current boss commented, there's got to be more to this story.
Now, I will admit that I have been sorely tempted to do something like this more than once in my insurance career. The one thing stopping me has been that the hassle of getting that much coinage together and delivering same far outweighed any pleasure I might have received at making a difficult attorney's life more difficult. I'm sure others in my profession will agree.
I bring this up because of a (probable spam) comment I received on my relatively recent post on litigation. The commenter stated: "Great information! Insurance companies don't like to pay claims and some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims. With this said, if you have a legitimate claim, you should expect to be treated fairly and expect the insurance company to honor the claim."
My response to the commenter was: "I'm not sure what you mean by "some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims", but I will say that claims people tend to be a jaded and suspicious lot by nature (it comes from too many dealings with sleazy lawyers and angry claimants). Insurance companies are in business to make money like every other business. As such, saying they don't like to pay claims is almost akin to saying the Pope is Catholic. Having said that, some companies have a well deserved reputation for being difficult and reluctant to pay claims while others are less difficult. Perhaps my next articles in the series will be on insurance companies and adjusters."
I thought I would take a moment and give a brief overview of the insurance business from the company perspective.
First, let's get one thing perfectly clear from the start: with very few exceptions, insurance companies are in business to make money. Any insurance company failing to make money for very long does not tend to stay in business for very long.
The primary vehicle for measuring the profitability of an insurance company is the loss ratio. In its purest form, the loss ratio is the total of all written premium collected divided by claims paid including expenses. There are two types of expenses: allocated loss adjustment expenses (A.L.A.E. for short though I've heard some people pronounce it as a word: "A-lay") and unallocated loss adjustment expenses (ULAE). ALAE is any expense that can be allocated to a specific claim file. The legal bill that pays for the attorney defending a specific lawsuit is ALAE as is private investigator, inspector, expert witness and other expenses when they arise out of a specific claim investigation. Adjuster salaries, office rent, electricity, phones, etc. are ULAE.
A loss ratio of 1.0 is break even. Loss ratios of greater than 1.0 mean a company is hemmorrhaging money, and loss ratios of less than 1.0 mean that the company should be profitable. It is theoretically possible for a company to have a 1.1 loss ratio and still turn a profit, but that feat requires successful return on investment of premium dollars which I may or may not discuss further. In my experience, it is rare to see a reported loss ratio below 0.50. The most profitable companies typically run a loss ratio in the .55 to .75 range. The majority of okay but financially profitable companies run ratios between .75 and .95. Companies having issues typically run loss ratios very close to or above 1.0. A recent example would be Fireman's Fund's dismal performance the last two years running with combined ratios (a combined ratio is the pure loss ratio including investment performance) of 1.294 (2012) and 1.036 (2013).
That's all so very nice and esoteric, but what does it mean?
To be honest, lots of things and nothing at all.
Underwriter and actuaries control one half of the equation (written premium) while the claims department controls most of the other half (losses paid and ALAE). Premium rates are set based on a variety of factors that are well beyond my limited math education and experience. Actuaries perform all sorts of calculations and review statistics (and goat entrails I'm sure) and analyze navels until they come up with a set of rates they think represents the rates that a given category of risk should pay. That's why teenage boys pay the highest rates for car insurance. Underwriters then stick their thumb in that pie and develop a set of underwriting guidelines that define the "appetite" for risk that the company wants to pursue. For instance, the last company I worked for prior to the one I am with now had a solid personal lines (auto and homeowner's insurance) and "middle market" appetite. They were content to pursue small to medium sized companies in a variety of industries, but they would steer away from anything too big or unique. Unique in the underwriting world = risky and hard to price.
Another driver of insurance premium rates is policyholder retention (or whatever the term de jour is). Basically, there is a finite number of people and/or companies out there. Most of them already have policies which forces the insurance industry to compete on price and service. Service is almost exclusively (but not completely) owned by the claims department. Underwriting sells a promise. Claims delivers on the promise. That leaves price. A company losing market share might choose to lower rates or increase its underwriting appetite or both in order to bring in more premium dollars, at the risk of increasing the loss ratio. A company seeing its loss ratio rise might choose to do the opposite, at the risk of losing market share. It's a very delicate balancing act.
That brings us to the loss/claims side of the equation. As mentioned a moment ago, service belongs to claims. There is a distinction here that needs to be mentioned (one I've mentioned before). When you see an ad for an insurance company on TV talking about fast claims service, they are talking about first party claims. A first party claim is one in which you the policyholder are making a claim for benefits to be paid to you under your policy. An example would be making a comprehensive or collision claim on your auto policy. A liability claim where someone else makes a claim on your policy for benefits to be paid to them arising from an accident caused by your negligence is a third party claim.
What difference does it make? Most states, if not all states, have some form of statutory or regulatory guidelines for how first party claims can/should be handled under pain of fine or penalty for failure to comply. As a result, the claims process for first party claims is pretty streamlined and efficient. Some companies still have field adjusters who will come to you; and, in some cases, they will even cut a check for the damages on the spot. Additionally, there is usually no requirement on a first party claim to prove legal liability as is required by the insuring agreement on a liability policy since a first party claim arises from contractual language as opposed to tort negligence theory. Prove that the contract was in effect and that the damages incurred are covered by said contract (which is usually self evident), and the check is in the mail.
Most of the time, when someone is griping about an insurance company, they are griping about the handling of a third party claim. As mentioned in a prior post, the time frames on a third party liability claim can go on for years. Most people anymore lose their patience and tempers after a few seconds. So, you can imagine how much fun third party claimants are to deal with when you deny their claims.
Now, as for the prevailing thought that adjusters look for reasons to deny a claim or that insurance companies don't like to pay claims, the short answer is that it depends.
Most individual insurance adjusters are hard working people trying to earn a living and do a good job. They have neither the authority nor do they receive the level of reward necessary to incentivise denying valid claims for no reason. The average adjuster, in my experience, is handling between 75 and 175 claims at any given time depending on the complexity of the mix. Most adjusters have very limited personal authority requiring management approval for settlements/reserves above certain amounts, coverage issues, etc. Most adjusters also know that denying a claim does not mean it goes away. In this litigious society, they know that it just means a lawsuit will be coming in soon and that file will be around a lot longer. If anything, there is a human nature tendency to find ways to PAY claims because settled files very rarely reopen, and adjusters have better things to do with their time than reopen files. As such, a permanently closed file is a happy file. Yes, there are individual adjusters that are jerks who are difficult to deal with. Pick any industry...you will find your share of jerks there too. The bottom line is that adjusters are people too subject to the same pressures and feelings as anyone else.
At the company level, there is not an insurance company in business today that has an official "smoking gun" document from senior management that says "look for ways to deny claims" or something to that effect. No one I am aware of is that stupid given the lengths to which bad faith lawyers will go to find such information. Now, will middle management do or say something stupid like that? Yes. I had an assistant VP of claims at a large, international insurance company tell me personally "I don't care if it's right. I just want it done." I explained to him that I had no intention of doing what he told me as I had no intention of explaining why such an unethical thing was done when my deposition would be taken in the inevitable bad faith lawsuit. His boss agreed with me after the fact. I still left that company pretty quickly thereafter though.
Will a company institute policies or procedures that make the claims process more difficult for everyone involved (adjuster and claimant alike)? Yep. Been there. Done that. Google "allstate colossus" for one such example. I've never worked for Allstate, but I did work for one company that also used Colossus for certain types of claims. I can attest that it is just like every other computer program in existence: garbage in, garbage out.
One consequence of the whole loss ratio analysis discussed above is the cyclical nature of claims settlements. When the loss ratio is high, the claims department gets pressure to "lower the loss ratio" or "reduce expenses". This can take the form of taking more cases in litigation to trial (which is counter intuitive since it involves incurring more expense) or settling more cases (which is also counter intuitive for obvious reasons). Taking more cases to trial is problematic for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the almost Byzantine nature of our legal process. Most adjusters hate to lose cases at trial. As such, they tend to recommend very few cases for trial and then only those that have legitimate, unresolvable disputes or those that they believe are "slam dunk" cases. I have sat in more than a few roundtables where I've told upper management in no uncertain terms that trying a particular case would be an epic mistake. Usually, they are smart enough to listen and the case eventually settles.
It should be noted that insurance companies don't just take premium dollars and dump them in an interest bearing checking account hoping everything balances at the end of the month. There is a whole side of the business controlled by accounting and the CFO that takes the money, invests it and hopefully scores a boatload of return on investment earnings in the process. Sometimes, that can blow up in their faces. AIG most notably went to the brink of oblivion just after the housing bubble burst in 2008 through over reliance on mortgage backed derivative investments. Hartford got splashed by that same bubble bursting for the same reasons but fared much better through a more diverse investment portfolio.
This is a pretty big topic that I am only scratching the surface of here, but I need to get back to work. If you are really that interested, you can dig into the mechanics of reserving and prior year development charges to present earnings, etc. That's homework for you CPA types.
In closing, your attorney is no better or worse a person than the adjuster for the insurance company. Treat them with the Golden Rule, and things will usually work out the way they are supposed to.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Serious Gas
As promised recently, it’s time that I get back to posting thought provoking content that doesn’t involve guns or M&M. One of the easiest of topics falling into the thought provoking categories is gasoline prices. This is a topic near and dear to my heart being the moron who bought his lovely and deserving wife a gas snorting behemoth SUV. So much for that extra salary money that came with the new job.
Sitting here typing this, I can look out my office window and see a gas station sign proclaiming that they will sell me a gallon of gas for the low, low price of $3.57 a gallon. Being the numbers geek that I am, I have a spreadsheet where I tracked gas prices (for budgeting purposes) over the last five or six years when I was commuting regularly. The lowest I’ve paid in that time frame was $1.45 per gallon at the end of 2008 and early in 2009. The most I paid was $3.94 a gallon in June of 2008.
So, what has the biggest impact on the cost of that gallon of gas you ask? Simply put, it is the cost of the barrel of oil from which the gas is refined. As of today, West Texas Intermediate crude oil is trading at $107.42 per barrel. There are 42 gallons in a barrel by the way, and I am also ignoring the price differences in the various grades of oil. It is my layperson’s understanding that a gallon of oil can be refined into approximately a gallon of gas with some other by products. So, for the purposes of this exercise, we will assume that there is a one to one oil to gas ratio. If that assumption is correct, a barrel of oil costing $100 translates into $2.38 towards the cost of that gallon of gas at the pump.
That’s just the cost of getting the oil out of the ground. You still have to transport the oil to the refinery, refine it, transport it to a retail location, market it, and pay your friendly, neighborhood gas station owner (not all or probably even a majority of stations are corporately owned). Oh, and let’s not forget the state and federal fingers in this pie.
The exact cost of refining is hard to pin down in a quick Google search, but one website I came across suggested that it accounts for 14% of the cost of a gallon of gas. This percentage fluctuates somewhat depending on refining capacity. You can pump all the oil in the world, and it won’t make much of a dent in the price of gas if there is no capacity to refine it. Supply and demand not only applies to the commodity itself but to the manufacturing process as well. Next time you want to get your blood boiling, take a look at when the last time it was that a new refinery was built in the United States. If I am not mistaken, it was 1976 (although one report indicates that a small refinery was built in Alaska in 1993). Environmentalists and government regulation have seen to it that new refineries don’t get built forcing companies to expand and refit existing refineries which hampers capacity quite a bit.
While we are on the subject of the government, you can thank them for another 13% or so (depending on where you live) towards the cost of your gallon of gas. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. State gas taxes vary from a low in Alaska of 8 cents a gallon to a high of 49.6 cents in Connecticut. Texas, where I live, falls in the middle/low end of the spectrum at 20 cents per gallon. The second lowest after Alaska is Wyoming at 14.5 cents a gallon. If you have a diesel, your federal fuel tax is 24.4 cents a gallon. I’m sure truckers everywhere appreciate that, and don’t think for a minute that cost doesn’t get passed along to you in hirer prices for manufactured goods and groceries.
Last, and least, is the combined cost of transport, distribution and marketing. That gallon of gas does not magically appear at your local station, and it is somewhat ironic that a small percentage of the cost of a gallon of gas is the cost of the diesel fuel it took to power the tanker truck to delivered the gas to the station from local storage tank farm.
The one person in this whole mess who is making the least off of this deal is the station owner. Generally, their mark up is between 3 and 10 cents a gallon. If you use a credit card which charges the retailer a percentage of the sale as a transaction fee, you’ve just cost him money not only on your sale but several others as well. That’s why most gas stations make most of their profits on cokes and candy.
Always at work in this process is the law of supply and demand. When the supply of oil exceeds demand, the commodity price generally falls and vice versa. Little things like Iran chest thumping in the Straits of Hormuz or Israel getting into it with anyone tends to make the oil investors skittish driving the price up a touch. A refinery explosion or a hurricane such as Katrina in 2005 that bullseyes a major petrochem area will significantly impact refining capacity which reduces the supply of the end product again impacting pricing in the same way that seasonal driving habits impact pricing through demand.
So, why do I bring this up? Have you listened to the presidential campaign rhetoric? Do any of you believe those horse thieves will be able to do ANYTHING about gas prices? Not bloody likely. Drill here, drill now is a great sound bite; but, without the refinery capacity to do something with it, it’s only hot air.
Now, pardon me while I go look at used car listings for a cheap, econ box to drive to work.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Sanity...Oh Sweet Fleeting Sanity
It might amuse you, my dear readers, to know that I had to take a full blown psychological assessment for reasons that will hopefully become more apparent in the near future when I am a little freer to discuss the reasons for same. In the meantime, I thought you might find parts of one of the assessment exercises interesting. I was asked to do a sentence completion exercise. I have no idea what insight this exercise gave them into my psyche, but apparently it didn't trip any major alarms.
Following are some of the more interesting questions/responses (set up in bold, completion responses normal):
- If I were given complete and absolute freedom and the means to do it, I would restore a vintage DC-3 or PBY Catalina and fly it all over the world to visit places I’ve never been, learn about other cultures, do things I’ve never done and help as many people as I could along the way."
- The 4 traits in people I dislike most are a) dishonesty, b) bad table manners, c) stubborness, and d) abusiveness to other people or animals.
- Most people don't know that they are blind to their own ignorance.
- People in business generally want to stay in business.
- Power is dangerous.
There was three pages of that kind of stuff not including the four or five other online assessments including advanced numerical reasoning (math geekery - which is greater? 1/59-1/95 or 1/37-1/73), pattern analysis (think Rohrshach ink blots meets Sesame Street "which one of these is most like the other"), personality inventories, etc. It was an evening of fun and self discovery for the whole family. Not really...it did take the whole evening...by myself...in the office. It was like taking the GRE and LSAT all over again...with the full knowledge that someone was going to use the information to make a recommendation about my "suitability".
Missed dinner too.That made me a little grumpy the next morning (woke up with a headache) when I was supposed to meet with the head shrinker in person.
More to come hopefully in the next week or so.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Fun with Math and Guns…Part Whatever
In between paying attention in class, working to earn a living in this wonderful economy brought to us by a constitutional law professor’s flawed understanding of Keynesian economics and trying to get a few hours of sleep in, I’ve been spending a little time thinking about my firearms wish list. As most things based on desire as opposed to need, items on the list ebb and flow with the regularity of the tides.
Currently, there are 24 guns on the list from .22s all the way up to .45-70s. Only five of those are really, really must haves. I’d put a .50 BMG rifle on the list, but there is no way (even in fantasy land) for me to ever justify the price of poker for one of those beasts. Ditto for full auto playthings that cost more in ammo for one day at the range than most of the other guns on the list. If I ever do become even modestly wealthy, an MG42 would be lots of fun. Until then, I’ll stick to guns that don’t need a controlling interest in an ammo manufacturing company to shoot regularly.
Anyweapon, as part of this exercise in self delusion, I’ve been trying to really examine the relative benefits of each addition to the list including caliber, capacity, purpose, etc. You know…so that I can explain to The Queen why I really NEED to spend $1800 on a Sharp’s .45-70 because you never know when you need to hit a bucket (or a mounted Indian) from 1500 yards away.
Incidentally, I recently read an article written by someone who was asked to go out with a bunch of scientists to recreate Billy Dixon’s amazing shot (http://powderburns.tripod.com/sharps.hmtl). Apparently, one foolish egg head bet that the Sharp’s .50-90 was incapable of making the shot. He lost the bet soundly. Based on the numbers reported, the Sharp’s was/is capable of making shots out past 3500 yards. I’d really like to see a U.S. Marine sniper lug one of those to the sandbox and take the sniper kill distance record back from the Canadians. That would be epic to see modern Barrett and MacMillan rifles bested by 140 year old technology. It would be even better to set up the shot Road Runner style. Paint a huge “X” on the ground with a hookah next to it and a little note written in Pashtu pasted to the hookah that says “smoke me”. The bullet would arrive while our intrepid terrorist tokes away on the hookah and you would hear the cartoon “hammer/anvil” sound when he drops.
So, anyway, I don’t know how many digressions that is, but we have strayed just a bit from my intended point. Bad writer. No donut. Emmmm….donut. [slobber, drool] Sorry. This is supposed to be about fun with numbers and guns. What I’m trying to talk about here is kinetic energy.
A bullet sitting in the chamber has a finite amount of potential energy stored in the mass of the bullet and the measure of gunpowder behind it. Once the primer is struck by the firing pin, that potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. Most people tend to focus on the amount of kinetic energy at the muzzle end of the barrel (creatively enough called muzzle energy) since kinetic energy begins to decrease the moment the projectile leaves the barrel due to a variety of factors including drag; however, the calculation is the same whether you are figuring muzzle energy, terminal energy or energy anywhere in between.
The calculation for energy is one half the mass of the bullet times its velocity squared. Since this is America, we still calculate the mass of the bullet in pounds which necessitates a little more mathemagical juggling since bullet weights are normally advertised in grains. There are 7000 grains in a pound. Since mass is the weight of the bullet divided by the force of gravity (which is about 32 feet per second more or less). The final energy calculation looks something like this:
Energy = (bullet weight in grains) x (velocity) x (velocity)
2 x 7000 x 32 ft./sec./sec.
So, for example, a 230 grain bullet (a typical .45 ACP bullet weight) travelling at 1000 feet per second has an energy of 513.13 ft. lbs. 513 ft. lbs. of energy is a respectable number for a pistol round. I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t want to get shot by one.
Most fanboys and haters deeply invested in the caliber wars want to focus on magazine capacity (how many rounds of 9mm can you hold steady at arms length?), muzzle velocity (that .44 is awesome cooking along at warp 5) or bullet diameter (a .45 will never shrink to 9mm!). Others chant the mantra of bullet placement, bullet placement…. Well, duh. If you don’t hit something vital, you’re not going to do much more than poke a hole in your target.
Let’s throw the Holy Hand Grenade into the caliber wars here for a second and look at some muzzle energy figures for comparison. I must confess that the following figures come from elsewhere, but I cannot for the life of me remember where I found them as I would like to give them credit where credit is due. The information comes from what can only be described as a backyard experiment, albeit a thorough one, done with some folks with time, money, ammo and a Thompson Center Contender on their hands. The bought a bunch of barrels for the TC in common handgun calibers. Each barrel started out at 18 inches in length. They would shoot a string of 6 shots for each type of ammo and barrel length combination through a chronograph and record the results. They would then cut off an inch of length from the barrel, lather, rinse, repeat. The muzzle velocity figures would then be averaged and used to calculate an average muzzle energy for a given load and barrel combination. The test was by no means exhaustive of every single load offered for a given caliber as that would have involved even more expense that the considerable amount these people already expended in their efforts, but it was fairly representative nonetheless.
*****11/13/11 Update - I finally tracked down the link and bookmarked it. It's from Bullets By The Inch.*********
*****11/13/11 Update - I finally tracked down the link and bookmarked it. It's from Bullets By The Inch.*********
Without further adieu, here is a quick and dirty comparison of some common pistol calibers from the study’s results:
Low High
9mm 295 ft.lbs. (147 gr./951 ft./sec.) 442 ft.lbs. (115 gr./ 1316 ft./sec.)
.38 Special 250 (110/1013) 315 (135/1027)
.357 Magnum 403 (110/1286) 633 (125/1511)
.40 S&W 355 (165/985) 545 (135/1350)
.45 ACP 338 (230/814) 504 (185/1109)
For apples to apples comparison, all the above velocity figures come from the 4 inch barrel. The low is the “worst” performing round for that category in terms of muzzle energy. The high represents the “best” muzzle energy figure. The bullet weight and muzzle velocity are the figures in parentheses above.
I can hear you already. “Yes, Shepherd. But what does it all mean?” Well, let’s start with the obvious. In a self defense context, you’re not going to stop a threat unless you can get a bullet to penetrate a vital area. Setting aside certain variables like bullet design that can affect penetration, the bottom line is that more energy means more penetration. The ideal configuration to maximize kinetic energy would be a fast, heavy bullet (can anyone say .50BMG? I thought you could). However, speed can make up for a lighter bullet. If you need proof of that, do the math on a 72 grain 5.56mm round moving along at 2850 feet per second (1305 ft.lbs.). I wouldn’t want to get shot by one of those either.
What’s the best round? It depends. Mainly on you and your preferences. A .38 will get the job done within certain limitations. So will a 9mm, so will a .40 and a .45. The fact is that a pistol round will be outperformed by a rifle round every time.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Fun with Calculators
A while back, I posted about the weird, mathematical places my brain goes when I am alone in a car. It probably says something very Freudian about me that guns and math occur in the same train of thought. However, that post turned out to be very popular. So, whatever.
Since I am back to commuting again on a regular basis for the first time in about three years, I've gotten back into my solitary, reflective ways. As I was on my commute to law school this evening, I was reminded of a period in my life not too long ago when I was forced to commute from Dallas to Houston on a weekly basis for work...for a period of two years. I chose to make the four hour drive myself in my own car instead of trying to fly or take the bus.
There is a reason my 2000 Nissan Maxima has over 312,000 miles on it, but I digress.
It was during this time of massively insane commuting that I had another fit of mathematical mind wandering. Since gas was selling for $3.89 a gallon at the time, you can guess where this is going.
Yep, I just had to try and figure out how much money I was spending every time a cylinder in the engine fired.
And, being the sharing type, I now bequeath this knowledge to you.
My car has a 4 stroke, 6 cylinder engine with an 18.5 gallon gas tank. In a 4 stroke engine, a cylinder fires once for every two revolutions of the crankshaft. Let's start our gas mileage calculations assuming you maintain an average speed of 60 miles per hour and that the car gets 30 miles to the gallon at that speed. My Maxima's best observed MPG so far was 34. So, it's doable.
60 miles in 60 minutes (1 hour) = 1 mile per minute
30 MPG at 60 MPH = 2 gallons per hour
18.5 gallon tank divided by 2 gallons per hour = 9.25 hour range/tank
18.5 gallon tank times 30 MPG = 555 mile range/tank
2100 RPM at 60 MPH = 126,000 crankshaft revolutions per hour
2100 RPM = 1050 individual cylinder fires per minute
1050 times 6 = 6300 total engine fires per minute
6300 times 60 = 378,000 fires per hour
2 gallons per hour = .03333 gallons per minute
6300 times .033333 = 189,018.9 fires per gallon
128 ounces per gallon
2 gallons per hour times 128 ounces per gallon = 256 ounces per hour
1 ounce = 1.8046875 cubic inches
128 ounces divided by 189,018.9 fires = .00067725 ounces per fire (= 0.0012222246094 cubic inch/20.029 cubic millimeter)
$3.89 per gallon = $0.3039 per ounce
$0.3039 per ounce times .00067725 ounces per fire = $0.00002058 per fire
So, to recap, every time a cylinder in a 6 cylinder engine running at 60 miles per hour averaging 30 miles per gallon, you are spending a little over 2 one thousandths of a cent. They tend to add up pretty quickly though.
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