Specialist Materials

  1. Purpose
  2. Contents and Format
  3. Pricing
  4. Additional resources

Pure Maths and Statistics for Actuarial Studies (also known as 'Module 0') is a course designed to help students improve their maths and statistics skills in preparation for Subjects CM1, CM2, CS1 and CS2 of the IFoA actuarial exams. The course can be studied in advance of, or alongside, these subjects and is geared specifically towards actuarial students.

To help you decide if you would benefit from this course, we have written an initial assessment. There are 25 questions which are typical of the maths and statistics knowledge required. Your starting point should be to have a go at the assessment, which should take approximately 75 minutes. Compare your answers with the solutions provided. If you scored less than 80% in the assessment, and/or struggled with the questions, and/or would appreciate some relevant reference resources, then the course is for you.

Download the Initial Assessment; download the Initial Assessment Solutions.

Contents and Format

We offer two packages: bronze and gold.

The Bronze package provides you with a textbook, which contains easy to follow explanations of topics, several worked examples with solutions, and practice questions with summary solutions at the end of each chapter. The textbook has 16 chapters, covering:

  • notation and terminology
  • numerical methods
  • differentiation and integration techniques
  • vectors and matrices
  • algebra, including summation of series and binomial expansions
  • basic and advanced probability
  • measures of location, spread and skewness
  • permutations and combinations
  • discrete and continuous random variables.

You can order a hardcopy of the textbook, or an eBook copy.

Download a sample of the textbook.

In addition to the textbook, the Gold package gives access to a course called 'Module 0 Gold' on our Virtual Learning Environment for up to 13 months from the date of purchase. The course offers a variety of easily accessible resources including:

  • study guides to help you navigate the material efficiently
  • over 75 short videos, recorded by our team of expert tutors, explaining key topics and working through example questions
  • introductory and progress tests for each chapter to test your understanding
  • full solutions to the textbook questions
  • two practice exams and a large bank of additional practice questions to consolidate your learning.

Information on the pricing of Pure Maths and Statistics for Actuarial Studies can be found here.

Yes! Whilst it's very comprehensive, there will inevitably be other topics that come up occasionally in the actuarial exams. Below are some PDF files, which you may find helpful.

The documents are in PDF format, and you will need the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it here.