What are Kolkulations

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 began with part time work at Foremost Insurance. Upon graduation that actuarial internship help me land my first actuarial job at The Hartford. During nine years there an underwriter Margaret got to know me well. Knowing me and my last name, one day she said “Steve you do very nice calculations. You do Kolkulations.” That’s how the name of my business came to be:

Kolkulations = Kolk + Calculations

But what are Kolkulations? I am data scientist and mathematician. I bring harmony out of databases like a virtuoso conductor blends orchestra instruments together. I pull joyful melodies out of stacks of numbers like a skilled voice coach trains a concert soloist. I have been a data scientist long before the term was coined. While getting trained as a mathematician at Calvin College, I played around, learned and applied several programming languages, between classes in the computer science department. My data sci and math nature, couple with a deep desire to tell factual stories that help people, led to an actuarial career. My actuarial career has been a joyful journey of measuring business growth, profit and risk in many ways. That practiced expertise lies behind my slogans:

Climate Change Analytics to help your enterprise flourish
Mining signals from noise data to put a solid handle on climate risks

Let’s get to know each other. Let me help you make your data dance & sing so your enterprise can flourish.

Speaking Engagements

A sought-after speaker, Steve is considered one of the nation’s foremost actuarial experts in climate change. He has spoken about climate risk issues and mathematical tools for extreme event analysis across the USA and internationally. He did this while serving as a member of the North American team which constructed the first-of-its-kind Actuaries Climate Index.

Consulting Services

Steve Kolk is president of Kolkulations, LLC, a risk analysis consulting firm that deploys data mining, predictive modeling and geospatial technology to drive client profitability.

Bob Finnigan, BBWA Sports Writer for the Seattle Times, nicknamed him “StatMaster” for providing hard-to-get stats adding factual color to Seattle Mariner stories.

I visit Ashville, NC aka “Climate City” regularly to stay abreast of data developments and expert climate science knowledge. For example, Kolkulations LLC follows the US Billion-Dollar Disaster data closely to track and analytze the changes from global warming on seven types of weather disasters.

While serving as chief actuary and senior modeler at CoreLogic, Kolk applied geospatial and modeling technologies to develop scientific catastrophe models and new products, including the company’s Hazard Risk Score, which blends nine catastrophic property hazards to be the modeling company’s best mortgage-default predictor.