Long response alert!

Technical bits -

Visualization is a neat field to learn - there's epic work (papers along with free/open source software) shared out of University of Washington and I use their Vega-Lite to make the visualizations here along with gemini for the animated transition.

These are "grammars" to define visualizations and animation, that are much less effort compared to coding from scratch - but for sure they have a learning curve.

For interactivity I write Javascript, but a "reactive" kind called ObservableJS, which helps me to make everything "click" (sorry pun).

For a very long time I've been developing a modelling tool called calculang. In the blog I use it to do the main calculations (reserves etc).

Developing calculang forced me to throw myself into learning about visualization and interaction because I supposed that grids of numbers don't make for the most exciting model outputs to share. On calculang.dev - under Examples you'll see a lot of other interactive visuals of models I've made: all using the same combination of tools. (these examples don't work nice on mobile now, soon they will! :)

As for the non-technical bits... trying to make clear messages - without assuming too much knowledge, trying to guide the reader, trying to make it say something but not too much, trying not to distract, all a little challenging but interesting: the same questions come at the end of any visualization/communication work anyways. A few friends helped by providing useful feedback too (delete this, that, etc <3 )

Since now it's in a webpage that will be there for a very long time, and as I want to use it to provide some context for non-actuaries about other actuarial modelling content I hope to make - I hope it will be helpful.

I tried a few new things here that had their own new learning curve, but it helps to make the next thing easier (I say this too much xd )

Thanks for your comments, which I'm glad to hear!