What is the difference in a statistician and an actuary?

Answer 1

An actuarist is a specialist in the statistics of risk. Often this is for insurance purposes. They do not usually collect data but interpret them to arrive at a probability of the insured event happening.

A statistician, on the other hand, may be involved in designing experiments (or surveys), collecting, validating and compiling data, analysing and reporting on them. The subject matter ranges across many topics - economics, business statistics, pharmaceuticals, epidemiology (these are areas that I have worked in). Lots more - social statistics, linguistics.