Dear Friends and Internet Travelers!
I am a mathematician. I juggle lots of numbers to squeeze stories out of them that help people understand their world by measuring and quantify things quickly for them. My college training led to a career as an actuary in many insurance companies. While talking one day with an underwriter at the biggest insurance company I worked at, she said to me, “Steve you do very nice calculations. You do Kolkulations.” That inspired my domain name, which I’ve been using as personal email for many years. Now climate issues have sparked my passions in recent years. I’ve read a lot about them. But I must turn the tide in my life and go from reading to writing. What will I be blogging about? Read on…
For a solid decade climate change issues have fascinated me. This issue has a global impact and needs many perspectives to understand it. I began as a skeptic until I did in-depth scientific research on storm surge and sea level rise. I spoke about that in several cities. Then job circumstances led me to live in St. Petersburg, Florida for a while just a two-minute walk from Tampa Bay. Gulf of Mexico beaches were just a short drive away. A two-minute walk from my apartment to Tampa Bay gave me a daily opportunity to see tide waters ebb and flow. I also visited the University of South Florida Oceanography School nearby in St. Petersburg. There I saw this tide gauge above for myself. 
The unstoppable rising tide measured there and all around North America is part of the undeniable proof of global warming that keeps stoking my passion to explore climate change. How?
I have enjoyed collaborating with a North American committee of actuaries. Working often with them, we built and published the Actuaries Climate Index in November of 2016. Learning the impact of global warming is real, and wanting the Earth to be a comfortable home for my grand children, also inspired me to travel. I have spoken about the ACI all around the USA, in Jakarta, Indonesia and London, Ontario. This blog will chronicle my past and future travels, my climate treks and a bit more.
I am also a lifelong fan of the Detroit Tigers and major league baseball. I’ve watched many I’ve read many books about baseball, mostly focused on the mathematical side of the game – also known as sabermetrics – a term coined by Bill James. Sabermetric baseball data and analytic mathematics has matured. I will write about sabermetrics occasionally when the need arises to illustrate mathematical ideas with familiar numbers from Major League Baseball statistics.
As an actuary, I enjoy juggling statistics. Both of the topics just mentioned will be fodder for this blog. Stay tune for insight of applied mathematics (especially Extreme Value Theory) to investigate Climate Change and MLB Baseball doodles. That is what Kolkulations will be all about. My blog and this website I will share my Kolk-ulations. These will be math-flavored Kolk-ulations of things that fascinate me. This will often be of climate risks (which are multiplying as the globe heats up) and occasionally of baseball sabermetrics (MLB statistics for fun). Please sign up and listen in on my blog for ideas ponder and explore with me.
-Stephen Lee Kolk, Steve@Kolkulations.com