Quarter 10 - Week 2

The weather's been surprisingly accommodating thus far, rains when we're in class, stops when we're out of class. My fellow students seem reasonably chirpy too... you'd think that after nine quarters they'd know these are short-lived moments of joy, but they seem to like living life in the moment. I'm a lot more chilled out so far, you wouldn't believe how relaxing it is to take just two subjects instead of the standard three... phew!

Business Data Mining & Decision Models

Ok, so I might be a little TOO relaxed. I fell asleep in the first session... I dont even know why! I'm getting enough sleep nowadays, for God's sakes! I remember some fundas about how you shouldn't overcook your analysis. Apparently, when you have your data set, you randomly select 70% of the values and run your magic on it. Fry, Flip and once your gyaan is condensed, you apply your analysis on a randomly selected 30% data from your set. If the values are very close and matching, then you know its not overcooked. He obviously said a lot more, but hey... if you don't fall asleep in a class, you don' give a chance for subliminal learning (You know, let your subconscious do some work), and therefore you're not really learning anything...

The second session was a lot of practical examples that made use of the learning from the first class. The prof takes an example of how they studied sericulture (silkworms stuff) and how they helped add some method-of-madness to the quality grading procedure. Apparently they ran some tests on a sample of 100 silkworm cocoons on various parameters of quality, and where able to find a condensed and quick mean for farmers to get their produced judged and paid for. I'm reasonably sure that I've learnt everything I missed on the previous session, this can be confirmed only during our midterm in a few weeks.

Strategic Thinking and Decision Making

Today's class easily makes it into my top-5 list of most active sessions. The criteria for judging is simple. The number of open eyes and fishmarket noise when the teacher is present, but where everything is directed at one destination(the prof) and everyone's vehemently arguing about points that they think is right. The prof knows how to make his examples - he actually 'localized' the examples from the textbook and added a few more examples of his own. Kept the class active for most of the two sessions (except for the last half hour in the second session, where he left us looking at twirling stars).

During the course of the classes, he managed to convince me that icecreams are a very diabolical device meant to force strategic thinking in innocent young minds - especially siblings. Most parents have a very simple formula for icecream sharing - Get one to cut, and the other to choose his half. This prof applies strategy. And because he knows it will be too easy, he forces us to consider that the icecream can melt. Therefore, there's a money value of time (Ahaah! No you finance chaps, I'm NOT talking time value of money, I really AM talking money value of time!). Did you know that if the icecream melts with an even number of negotiation rounds, people share 50:50, but if it melts with an odd number, people take an advantage of n/(2n+1):n+1/(2n+1). Get in touch with me, I'll explain why! Oh, charges of Rs. 3000 apply.

If that wasn't enough, he gives examples of husbands and wives who want to spend time together, but one likes sports and the other likes movies. So who wins? Again, ask any normal person, and he'll say 'Listen to the wife. Long-term happiness over short-term gain'. But the prof made a 2 by 2! And via this he actually explained a Nash equilibrium, a dominated and a dominant strategy! Therefore, if you've been wondering how your parent/spouse is constantly getting the better of you, and if they have an MBA, you should know... it's not their fault. There's an even bigger sinister plot running in front of you!

While the class was definitely a lot of fun, and informative... the principles of game theory acknowledge one major shortcoming, the choices made are completely rational and thought of as the gains to the individual not as gains or harms to the opponent. It will be a while before we attempt to solve what happens if the opponent is in real life (thereby allowing emotional variables) or if the opponent is just plain dumb (Good luck trying to play the Nash game with a real dumass partner). The quiz for this is dawning up quite fast, so we've got some heavy reading to do... and a game to be ready for next week. Quite entertaining, thus far!

In the meantime, there's a ton of activity around the upcoming Vista fest at IIMB. We have a few corporate events too, hence external invitation is really welcomed! If you're interested, check out the site: http://www.iimb-vista.com and register for it! As a corp junkie, here's your chance to experience college life again! :)