Cette thèse est mue par la volonté de son auteur (et de son promoteur) de mettre en évidence combien le concept d'ingéniérie actuarielle est non seulement un concept actuel mais également porteur d'avenir pour l'actuariat. Dans ingéniérie, on entend ingénieur, soit un individu formé à l'application des sciences, dans le but de résoudre des problèmes technologiques concrets et complexes. Ces compétences, traditionnellement plutôt utilisées par l'industrie, sont ici mises au service de l'Actuariat. Nous espérons montrer combien un actuaire ouvert aux techniques récentes de la Statistique peut enrichir sa panoplie d'outils pour répondre aux questions toujours plus variées que pose la pratique. Car là est aussi un des messages de ce travail: montrer que ces développements récents sont loin d'être de pures gymnastiques intellectuelles mais offrent de réelles solutions ou alternatives valables à des problèmes connus. Avec pour bagage les modèles de régression non linéaires, nous nous promenons dans les différents domaines de l'Actuariat, abordant tout d'abord un aspect méthodologique. Ensuite, nous traitons de deux problèmes liés à la branche Non Vie : tarification géographique et échelles bonus-malus. Enfin, nous voyons comment des perspectives nouvelles peuvent également s'inscrire dans la branche Vie, à travers la problématique de la modélisation de la mortalité future. Il ne s'agit en aucun cas d'un inventaire exhaustif des possibilités récentes offertes par la Statistique à l'Actuariat, mais bien d'un tour d'horizon qui entend ouvrir des portes dans des domaines variés. Cette thèse est composée d'articles (rédigés en anglais) publiés dans des revues nationales et internationales.

This paper will discuss the bankruptcies experienced by U.S. automakers in both 1979 and 2009. The main factors which led the automakers into financial ruin was the uncontrolled power of labor unions, the severe financial impact of oil embargos, the aggressive imposition of federal regulations and the increasing dominance of Japanese imports. After discussing these important factors, the paper will describe the specifics of Chrysler’s bailout experience in 1979 with the positive public acceptance of the government loans, largely due to the character of Lee Iacocca. After delving into Chrysler, this paper will explain the specifics of the government’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009. The paper will also review the government’s position regarding the significant economic impact of letting the U.S. automakers fail. In conclusion, this paper will demonstrate that although the 1979 bailout was better perceived by the American public, the long term impact of 2009 bailout has the potential to produce a more strategic change in the U.S. auto industry.

The thesis examines representations of the matriarch in three Chinese Canadian texts: SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe, Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony, and Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children. The matriarch is the female head of the Chinese household who is able to gain substantial power by manipulating the assets granted to her in a patriarchal system. Dislocated from her home in China, she serves in these texts as the focal point for the collision between the New World, Canada, and the Old World, China. Confronted by a new environment, the matriarch must decide whether she will choose conformity or identity experimentation. The thesis is concerned with the way Chinese Canadian writers negotiate multiple identities through narrators who must come to terms with the divided loyalties of the women of the past. The analysis of the matriarch's identity shifts is informed by the work of the feminist theorists, Elspeth Probyn and Moira Gatens, who explore the productive potentials of rebelling against binary codes. The thesis is divided into three chapters that discuss how the texts come close to embracing identity fluidity, but cannot overcome the need to reach a coherent representation of the matriarch. The first chapter is devoted to Disappearing Moon Cafe, and argues that Lee's narrator sacrifices her female characters, albeit reluctantly, in order to privilege feminism over her Chinese heritage. The second chapter turns to The Jade Peony and discusses how Choy's child narrators give in to binary thinking by relegating Poh-Poh, the Old One, to the realm of memories to make room for the New Ways. The final chapter on The Concubine's Children explores Chong's desire to redeem a grandmother who wreaked havoc on the family when she defied traditional gender roles. The thesis concludes by determining that Lee, Choy, and Chong are reaching for a multi-voiced reading of the past, but cannot yet articulate a way out. The uncertainty of their representations of the matriarch signals their efforts to move beyond binaries to a state of coexisting identity categories.

In Canada, almost everybody is familiar with stereotypes about ‘Native social dysfunction’. Canada’s present-day “Imaginary Indian” (Francis) is indeed associated with substance and welfare dependence as well as family violence and neglect. However, the mainstream tends not to wonder about the actual social suffering behind the image and about the causes of these supposed patterns. In Daughters Are Forever, the Sto:lo / Squamish writer and activist Lee Maracle deconstructs these racist clichés by emphasizing the impact of the colonial process on real-life Native populations. Through a Sto:lo social worker’s attempts to understand how colonial policies have affected Aboriginal motherhood, Maracle demonstrates the roots of Indigenous social ills in collective traumas inflicted over several centuries and transmitted intergenerationally. The conclusion of the protagonist, Marilyn, that “[c]olonization is such a personal process” (216) summarizes the ways in which collective trauma and cultural genocide largely condition individual traumas and grief. Her parallel journeys to help an Anishnaabe woman patient, prevent the abductions of Native Canadian children by mainstream welfare services, and mend her own toxic relationship with her daughters further demonstrate the interrelatedness of Indian policy, patriarchal institutions, and personal and familial spiritual illnesses. They also enable Maracle to show the dangerous ethnocentrism of mainstream psychology and the need to create cross-cultural methodologies and therapies appropriate to the diverse Native North American cultures. By depicting the “unresolved human dilemmas” (Preface 11) of Aboriginal characters, she strives to create social change by drawing her readers into her stories to shock them into awareness.

During the mid 1960s, record producers and jazz critics coined the phrase Sidewinder Syndrome to describe the funky style of music popularized through the success of Lee Morgan's solo release of "Sidewinder. The funky style, rooted in the heart of the hard bop period (1955-1965), united jazz, Latin influences, and popular black traditions such as gospel and urban blues. Lee Morgan (1938-1973), composer of "Sidewinder," and Richard "Blue" Mitchell (1930-1979) were two prolific trumpet artists from this time period who embraced the Sidewinder Syndrome, and as a result provided a rich improvisational vocabulary, as it pertains to trumpet performance practice. This study presents six annotated transcriptions from each artist focusing on elements of jazz vocabulary and solo construction.The study reveals vocabulary and solo construction preferences within the Sidewinder Syndrome. Results indicated the three most common harmonic generalization elements were digital patterns, change-running, and the bar-line shift. Complex harmonic generalization elements included bebop scale, 3-b9 movement, linear chromaticism, and tri-tone substitution / altered dominant. Vocal inflections derived from gospel music and urban blues were the half-valve, grace note, alternate fingerings, note bending, and fall. Bebop influenced articulation included upbeat-to-downbeat articulation and ghost note. Bebop influenced ornamentation included the two-sixteenth note ornament and the turn. Results suggest solo construction relied heavily upon the sequencing of rhythmic and melodic motives. Space was utilized for clarity, new concepts, and octave displacement. Developmental concepts included running eighth and sixteenth note lines. This study provides an opportunity for students of improvisation to isolate and study jazz vocabulary and solo construction of the Sidewinder Syndrome. / School of Music

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is an iconic classic that inspired many street lawyer novels. Examining John Grisham’s A Time To Kill as a low-culture-imprint of Lee’s novel, the thesis analyzes the convergent and divergent points of rhetorical devices that promote colour-blind liberalism across the two texts seeing as they are published 30 years apart. Both pieces of legal fiction act as a reflection and critique of formal legal institutions and through this reflection, the thesis deals with how the texts reinforce, perpetuate and resist the white dominant ideology through the “progressive” race politics of colorblind liberalism.

隨著台灣經濟的大幅提升與保險的觀念在國內越來越盛行，許多的人都會選擇去投保，本研究採用的資料是從保險事業發展中心所獲得，其收集台灣各個保險公司所銷售的保單，包含定期險、生死合險和終身壽險的資料。我們藉由此資料來分析具有何種特質的人會去購買何種保單，哪些因素會造成死亡率之間的差異。近些年來，台灣的生活水準和醫療水平有顯著的進步，台灣人口的死亡率也因此大幅地下降，男女間的平均餘命也隨之增加，台灣逐步地邁向高齡化社會。但隨著死亡率的改善，保險公司之前所銷售的較長年期的保險商品，有可能會造成保險公司低估或高估其保費，使公司未來的現金流量不穩定。而且以前公司通常是使用生命表的死亡率為基礎，但這樣並不能真正反映有保險人口的死亡機率，因此，我們將使用實際投保的資料，透過Whittaker修勻和Gompertz法則，計算其死亡率，並利用Lee -Carter模型去對未來的死亡率做預測，探討死亡率的下降，會對保險公司造成何種衝擊與其影響到底會有多大。

In Canada, almost everybody is familiar with stereotypes about ‘Native social dysfunction’. Canada’s present-day “Imaginary Indian” (Francis) is indeed associated with substance and welfare dependence as well as family violence and neglect. However, the mainstream tends not to wonder about the actual social suffering behind the image and about the causes of these supposed patterns. In Daughters Are Forever, the Sto:lo / Squamish writer and activist Lee Maracle deconstructs these racist clichés by emphasizing the impact of the colonial process on real-life Native populations. Through a Sto:lo social worker’s attempts to understand how colonial policies have affected Aboriginal motherhood, Maracle demonstrates the roots of Indigenous social ills in collective traumas inflicted over several centuries and transmitted intergenerationally. The conclusion of the protagonist, Marilyn, that “[c]olonization is such a personal process” (216) summarizes the ways in which collective trauma and cultural genocide largely condition individual traumas and grief. Her parallel journeys to help an Anishnaabe woman patient, prevent the abductions of Native Canadian children by mainstream welfare services, and mend her own toxic relationship with her daughters further demonstrate the interrelatedness of Indian policy, patriarchal institutions, and personal and familial spiritual illnesses. They also enable Maracle to show the dangerous ethnocentrism of mainstream psychology and the need to create cross-cultural methodologies and therapies appropriate to the diverse Native North American cultures. By depicting the “unresolved human dilemmas” (Preface 11) of Aboriginal characters, she strives to create social change by drawing her readers into her stories to shock them into awareness.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 210-214).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).