<p>what do actuaries do?</p>
<p>Accounting-like stuff.</p>
<p>actuaries basically do risk-assessment. They calculate risks for any given situation or problem. Usually employed in the insurance industry for obvious reasons. Automobile risks, health risks, business strategies risk (consulting falls under this a little bit too), etc. People don't like taking risks, so they hire actuaries to assess a given situation objectively and determine the risk of a given course of action. Pay is generally good.</p>