The Metalog distributions: future of risk management quantification

Introduced in 2016, the metalog distributions are the most flexible and easiest to use of all probability distributions and have been increasingly widely adopted for practical use. If you have data (expert elicited, empirical, or simulated) and are not sure which continuous probability distribution to use, you are likely best off starting with a metalog. That’s because metalogs are more shape-flexible; faster and easier to fit to data; allow a choice of boundedness (unbounded, semi-bounded, or bounded); have simple closed-form equations; and are easier to simulate.

Beyond basic concepts, you'll learn in this workshop how to determine a metalog that’s an excellent fit to your data -- typically in less than a minute. We include free downloadable Excel files to help you get going and that you can use in the future as part of your risk-management toolkit. In addition, you will learn how to use metalogs for expert-elicitation with real-time feedback; how to combine expert-elicited metalogs to yield a consensus metalog in closed form; how to simulate with metalogs; and how to bring metalogs into your Excel-based models. We will also touch on closed-form Bayesian updating of metalogs when new data becomes available. Come join the fun and add new capabilities to your risk-analysis toolbox.