Monthly Archives: October 2009

Patterns & Superstitions

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The idea for this essay came to me when a friend of mine related a funny incident to me. He was trying to teach an elderly person how to use the internet to see news videos. My friend directed the elderly gentleman to the BBC website. Then he asked him to click on a link to a video (which, by the way, said “click here”). The video window appeared. Then the “loading” graphics, which looks like something like this, appeared on screen. The elderly gentleman assumed that, since he had to click on the icon that said “click here”, he is supposed to move the mouse pointer along with the revolving graphics for the video to load. So he did that, and coincidently, whenever he tried doing so and stopped, the buffer would fill up and the video would play!

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Reference Prices in Passenger Cars – A secondary research study

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As part of a course called behavioral dimensions & marketing strategies, which is a sequel to consumer behavior, I was required to pick any one concept of consumer behaviour, find five scholarly journal articles on it and then apply the learning from the papers onto a market category of my choosing.

I chose to study the small passenger cars segment and apply the concept of reference price on it. This seemed interesting at the time since Tata Nano had just been launched and its effect on existing cars especially with respect to their price perception and reference price seemed novel and relatively unexplored.

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The role of credit default swaps in precipitating the current financial crisis

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In november of 2008, when the financial crisis was beginning to unfold, I was enrolled in a course called “banking, finanicial markets and systems”. This was an interesting course taught by Professor PC Narayan. One of the main thesis of professor was that lack of regulation causes high leverage and high risk taking and therefore makes financial markets unstable. I, along with a couple of my classmates, tried to investigate the role of credit default swaps, in precipitating the crisis. We started out with the following idea.

Credit default swaps is a contract in which the buyer makes a series of payments to the seller in exchange for the right to payoff if there is a default in respect of the reference party. The market for credit derivatives became larger than the underlying assets themselves, and it is often alleged that these instruments catalyzed the meltdown. The term paper aims at exploring the instrumentality of these instruments in precipitating the current financial crisis.

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Is election commission’s data on candidates of any use?

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In an interesting statistical study that I did with a couple of my 4.0 friends, we set out to find whether all the data that election commission collects from each candidate has any predictive power on their chances of winning. Our stated objective was:

The election commission of India collects various data on candidates of Lok Sabha elections. This data includes such variables as age, assets, liabilities, number and nature of criminal cases registered against the candidate, educational status etc.

The authors were interested in studying the effects (or the absence thereof) of these variables on the outcome of the election.

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We are like that only

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I guess adding “only” for emphasis is part of Indian English. I think we have this emphasis adding words in all Indian languages. Hence it probably is part of the way we think.

Are you coming to the class?
Yeah! I am going there only!

Where do you get this biscuit?
In the same shop only!

Is there any other way to express the same emphasis in English? Or is it like this only?

Busy-ness

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Came across this wonderful passage recently when I was reading about Gandhiji.

Gandhi was sworn to punctuality, and his life was governed by the watch to an unusual degree; though it should at once be added that despite keeping to a meticulous schedule for much of his life, Gandhi’s conception of time was never such that it did not allow him to make time for anyone, howsoever high or lowly, who should choose to enter into his life or make demands upon him. That pernicious word ‘busy’, with which we all excuse ourselves from the common obligations of humanity, and the onerous company of unwanted relatives, acquaintances, and others who seek to intrude uponour time, was surely no part of Gandhi’s lexicon.

I guess there is a logical reason for this, notwithstanding the humanitarian one. It is that if you live by your plan, you close your mind to new experiences and in a way to life.

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Alcatel-Lucent’s R&D centers on sale?

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Recently CNBC reported Alcatel Lucent may sell its R&D centers at Bangalore.

Global telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent is likely to sell its research and development (R&D) centers in India. CNBC-TV18 learns that it has approached three IT firms for a possible buy. These include Wipro, Infosys and Cognizant. The combined value of arm is expected at Rs 250 crore, informed a source.

Of course, the news was immediately denied by official sources, which claim that R&D is “strategic asset” to drive “innovation”.

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