The future Issue is offered less as a crystal ball than as a meditation on how to think about the future at all.

Ian Duncan, professor of actuarial science:

The courses I teach at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are foundational: compound interest and life contingencies. Compound interest is about the time value of money. A dollar in 20 years will not be worth what it is today, so what's the value today of a dollar in the future? Life contingencies introduces probabilities: Instead of thinking about it as a dollar in 20 years' time, it's a dollar in 20 years if you're still alive. We're very concerned with people outliving their assets: If you ask the average person his or her life expectancy, they'll significantly underestimate it. The profession is very data driven. The good aspect is that it's rigorous; the bad aspect is that it trains you to believe there's a right and wrong answer to every question and no shades of gray.