Day 19 and Farewells...

Today was 19th Day of classes. It was the 10th and final class for both Statistics and Economics. Both these classes were being taught by two of the most amazing professors. The right mix of humor and keeping the interest up was the main strength for both the profs. These were among best classes I have ever attended in my life.

In Statistics we continued our discussion on multi level categorical variables. In the last part we studied about the log transformations. In Economics we studied about the expected utilities in case of bonus compensation by the companies as well as in the insurance sector. The problems were quite practical and interesting. Jargon for the day was asymmetrical information.

Tomorrow will be the last classes for Term 1. Monday the D-Day is coming. It's going to be a few long nights before Monday.

In the mean time I met a colleague who is a CA and comes from banking background. Got some gyan from him about the banking industry. It seems my interest lies more in the financial world. But it still seems to be figured out how easy or difficult will it be for me to switch. I have to start building these competencies and probably I should aim at getting an A in Financial Accounting.

On the ISB Radio there was an interview of Prof Piyush Kumar. It was a nice interview and learnt a few good things about the prof. He has keen interest in Comedy and is infact writing a script for a movie! In his message for the students, he asks the students to be good managers rather than being good students. He wants us to be doers and know knowers. He says, doers hire knowers. An interesting thought!!

Day 18 and Selling the gun...

Today 90% if the classes for Term 1 got over. The final term exams are coming closer and so is the time to visit home after almost 2 months. Today the much awaited Stats scores were declared. The max was 100 (yes, a perfect score). The mean was 70 with SD 13. I scored 66.67. This was in line with what I was expecting. I had screwed up my stats prep and exam badly. This has led to some depression today and I am quite demotivated. I hope I recuperate asap and get back to my final term exams prep and hope to do well there.

The first class today was the marketing class and I liked today's class the most among all Maketing classes. The topic was distribution channels and I got a lot of insights. One important learning from today's class was that the organized retail is killing the brands. The manufacturer of national brand not only faces competition from other national brand manufacturer, but also from retailers. Why? Because more and more retailers in organized retail are coming out with private label products which are as good as branded products but come cheaper to the consumers. These are placed strategically next to the national brands and the consumer can easily compare the two products. The reference price for the consumer comes down immediately and hence driving him away from the branded good. The private label market is high margin market for the retailer. The national brand manufacturer would ideally want to pursue pull demand marketing so that he doesn't have to do trade promotions. This would contract the margins for the label. By killing the brands, the retailer forces the manufactuer to pursue push marketing and hence swelling the margins for the retailer. This seems a win-win scenario for the retailer and of course for the end customer. But the highlight of today's class was professors remark on manufacturers offering to manufacture for the private label brands too and someone asking why would the manufacturer do that. The professor's remark was "If you are getting killed anyway, why not as well sell the gun to them!". The whole class burst into laughter.

The second class today was the accouting class and we learnt about lease accouting, Capital Lease Accouting vs Operating Leases. The topic was interesting. There was also a learning on calculating the EMI for loans. Two facts got clarified for me today, why the interest payment is more in the beginning when you pay EMIs and why are zero coupon bonds so called.

Day 17 and Auctions...

Today was the day of classes 9 for Economics and Statistics. In Statistics, we covered the multi level categorical variables. A very interesting example discussed was about an allegation that female employees were paid less, as a result of a survey. The results looked credible, because the mean salary for men was almost 4000 more than mean salary for women. However, if we analyzed the issue further, we saw that given a particular designation and years of experience, the women were in fact being paid more. The averages were high because men had spent more years in the company or were at higher designation. Salary was directly related to designation and number of years of experience. While the example was relevant from Statistics perspective, it was a great learning for me in general. Without this knowledge, I would have been persuaded easily my the magazine and newspaper surveys that keep publishing such results. I have learnt the plain mean and standard deviation and probably are least useful statistics. I learnt that a look at statistics should be in a perspective. We should not jump on conclusions without reasoning the information being provided. On analysis, the result was totally opposite of what was being alleged. I also learnt about the "Practical Importance" aspect of statistics today.

The economics class was as hilarious as it was informative. Prof Bruce Allen took it to another level today with his tit-bits and the jokes. It proved very helpful to be awake in an otherwise morphean environment. Post lunch classes in the summers are a perfect recipe for afternoon siesta. The weather was good today for a change. We different jargon learnt today are dutch auction, modified dutch auction, English auction, the winner's curse, law of large numbers, expected utility, bid discount and risk pooling.

With the final term exams on next Monday the last leg of first term journey has started. Things were not even under control and I was still struggling to figure out the things, and the term end is here. There are a lot of club meetings, sessions, election soap boxes, radio shows and movie screenings going on. People are active in these forums. I am not attending anything and still struggling with the study. Either people have given up on study or are super smart. Time will tell, until then I will continue my struggle valiantly.

Day 16 and the happy hour...

Today was the 16th day of classes. A weekend is here and along comes a series of assignments and projects to be finished. Today we effectively completed 8 classses for each subject. Two more classes for each subject to go in this term and we will be 12.5% MBA. Wow!

In the Marketing class, I studied about the Reference Points of pricing and some great practical concepts like "Why care about a couple of cents per minute for great quality- AT&T" vs "Why waste $100" concept. Prof Piyush Kumar makes a lot of sense and I have started developing some interest in Marketing course finally.

In the Accounting class, I studied about the Inventory accounting. It was a normal topic. Didn't find anything interesting in today's class.

A colleague had come out with an idea of a "Happy hour" where everyone from ISB - current students, faculty and alums meet on Thursday evening for an hour. This is more of a networking platform and to unwind after a grueling week and get ready for even more grueling weekend. Today was the first Happy Hour and it was a phenominal success. Lot's of people turned out, as I was expecting. What would surprise me is if the numbers remain the same as time progresses. I met a couple of new people today, so it did help with the networking. There was light music, live music, and drinks and snacks to buy. Overall had a nice time. Only thing that it was happy two and half hours and not just one hour.

After this, I attended the photographic club meeting and learnt some interesting facts about digital photography like take photos from an angle for a subject like flowers, how to focus to get the effects, how to hold the camera etc. It was quite enlightening.

This week I have a Accounting Quiz and Economics Quiz to compelte, apart from the Accounting Project. I have not seen the project yet, but I have heard it is huge - 200 pages!! So, this weekend is going to be busy. And the fact that this is the last weekend before the final exam weekend, lot's of study to do. I have big plans but it remains to be seen, how many of these materialize.

Day 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and something imp in between

The study group after dunking Vipul. Birthday boy in pink.

The study group all dressed up!


And another time with some style!

Had no choice but to miss blogging for the last few days. There was a mid-term exam on Friday, 18th May. It was to test two subjects Stats and Economics. I was prepared for Stats as I had finished reading a couple of books on Stats. Then two days before the exam I tried the 2005 paper and got screwed up. It really stressed me out and I had to work hard. Slept at 3:00 AM. Tried to solve the paper and get the answers. Finally, on the exam day, I think I did reasonally well in stats, i.e. I met everyone else. It seems everyone I met, had done better than I did...:-(...post lunch was Eco exam and I again felt I had done reasonably well. Eco grades came out today. Avg of 25/38 with a standard deviation of 5. I scored 28. Which is slightly above avg, but not what I want. I needed to score around 32 to be competitive. Stats result is still expected but I am not counting on it much.

In the mean time, in Economics I studied the Game Theory, pricing strategies, Oligopoly and all these topics are very intesting. The way Prof Allen teaches is just awesome. He is fast, but his sense of humour is just fantastic! And I can't complain about the pace, because this is expected in the 1 year MBA course.

In Statistics, we are studying Multiple Regression. And I have to say that Prof Waterman is probably the best in the world as teacher for Stats. The way he structures his lecture and explains the concept is just excellent. If I were to rate all my profs in ISB I have been exposed to, Prof Waterman will be rated the best. I have talked to people around and they concur with me.

In Marketing, worked on a case on Virgin Mobile USA. Worked for two consecutive nights until 4:00 AM to complete the case and submit the report a couple of hours before deadline. In the class, studied about the pricing strategy - different from ideal scenario as told in Economics class and about the global brands.

In Accounting class, studied about accounting for Account Receivables that we do not expect to receive and the number of frauds that could be done in this case...:-) I also got my answer to the McAfee scandal too. Learnt about channel stuffing and how coca cola and Bauch and Lomb used it to inflate their revenues at financial period ends.

Stats results are expected sometime this week and I am keeping my fingers crossed. BTW, it was Vipul's birthday today. He is my study group mate. We went to dunk him at mid-night and took the much needed break from marketing assignment. Yesterday, we also had the CAS photo shoot, i.e. photos were taken for putting them into the student profile book. Here are some glimpses in the pictures attached.

Day 10 Frauds...

Today was the 10th Day of classes. And now theoratically, my 1st term is 50% over. Yahoo!!! More than the excitement is brings, the fear of mid-term is catching on. Just 2 more days to go now and so much to do...:-(

In the marketing class, I studied about the advertisements. How should the sellers sell to the consumers and different strategies they adopt. The prof mentioned that there is a whole course on advertising, so what we covered today was more like the tip of the ice-berg. With this Prof Samu's designated 5 classes are over and we bid him a farewell. From Thursday Prof Piyush Kumar will take the remaining 5 marketing classes.

The accounting class was fun as usual. We studied about the Stock Options and the Cash Flow statements. The prof mentioned that he had initially planned 20 minutes for Stock Options but taking cue from the previous classes, we spent about 1 hour on this topic. What was interesting was the recent stock options related frauds. Learnt about Spring Loading, Bullet Didging and Backdating methods of stock option frauds. I didn't understand these news with the Apple news as recent as 1 month old. Today, everything was clear. I also learnt about the interesting website about stock options expensing www.expensingisbadaccounting.com.

Tomorrow, a new day and two new profs. Stats will now be taken by Prof Waterman from Wharton (http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~waterman/homepage.html) and the Managerial Economics class will be taken by Prof Bruce Allen from Wharton (http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/faculty/allen.html)

Plan: Finish stats study for exam by Wednesday end of day. Thursday work on Economics. Forget preread for next two days.

Day 9 - Transience in life

Today the third week of classes started. Also 14th May is exactly one month after I landed in ISB. Though now it seems it's already a month passed out of 12 months course, but on a different note, it also seems that I have been at ISB since a loooooong time. For Statistics and Economics, these were last classes by Prof Bob Stine and Prof Amit Bubna. The classes for Stats are divided 5 each between Prof Stine and Prof Waterman, while Eco is divided between Prof Bubna and Prof Bruce Alen.

At end of the class, while it felt good that I was half way through in the 1st Term for these two subjects, the parting note from the profs didn't feel as good. It is strange how you develop a strong bonding with the things around you. I didn't talk to any of these profs at one to one level, still I was feeling bad that there would be no more association with them in term of classes. It also shows that transience of everything in life. Before starting it seemed a long one year of separation from family and job, while now it's already a month past, and we feel we are going through the teething at ISB.

Mid-Term exams are approaching. Friday is the D-Day. Classes until Thursday evening. This is so different from Engineering, where one day before exam I used to call up my mates and ask them about the syllabus, take a xerox of notes and stuff your mind. Next day puke everything in the exam, and net result, empty mind. No learning!! I was been studying quite regularly here and still I feel the void and the peer pressure. Everyone around seems to be working hard as well as having fun, while I seem to be doing neither. Hope things will change as time progresses and I get acclimatized in this environment.

Day 8 of classes followed by parties...

Day 8:

We had the marketing and the financial accounting classes today. In marketing, we studied about the branding. We had a product "Vacuum Cleaner - which does both wet and dry cleaning". We studied the class in this product's context. There was one section where we had to create a slogan to sell this brand...My group came up with "Dry or Wet - The best you can get." I liked this a lot. Another hilarious slogan shared in the class was "It sucks big time!".

The accouting class was very good as usual. We studied about a few financial ratios and about the income and cash statements. We are learning a lot about the accouting frauds in these classes. And today itself I read an article on rediff about an accounting scandal by McAfee and the article made sense. Earlier I would have just ignored this article.

Post classes, we had a section D party. The theme was Govinda-ala-re. It was fun. Met a few new people. Came back around 12 when the mass dunking in the pool started. Wasn't too keen on getting dunked.

On returning found another party happening in my SV. The speakers were placed right inftont on my window. So, couldn't sleep or study. We all 4 quadies talked until 2 AM. Then we hit the bed. I don't know when the music stopped.

Image is the group after the dunkings...(I am not there in the image, had left by then...)

Day 7 of classes...

We are into 2nd week in our 1st core term. Just to give you an update, we have 8 terms of 6 weeks each. First 4 terms are called core terms and the last four as elective terms. We have following four subjects in 1st core term:

1. Managerial Economics or MGEC
2. Statistical Methods for Management Decisions or SMMD
3. Marketing Management or MKTG
4. Financial Accounting in Decision Making or FADM

We have 2 classes of 2 hours each day for 4 days in a week. Which makes it 4 hours of classes each day, 1 class each for 2 subjects everyday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are off days.

Today my section (there are 6 sections of 70 people) had classes for MGEC and SMMD. SMMD classes are taken by Prof Robert Stine from Wharton while MGEC is taken by Prof Amit Bubna from ISB. In SMMD I have had 4 classes including today's class. Before today we covered Statistics concepts like measures of central tendency and dispersion, probability, discrete probability distribution and continous probability distributions. Then we covered Hypothesis testing. Yesterday we studied correlation and applied the concepts to Portfolio construction. In today's class we took the concept further to find out the optimal portfolio provided the history data of stocks. We ended the class with understanding of financial/statistical terms like alpha, beta, R-squared and RMSD. These terms are also applied to Mutual Fund portfolios. Today finding out how these parameters are actually calculated and what insight it gives was very enligntening. In fact, I also learnt that most of the statistical research is done for Finance industry and the concepts that we learnt today actually fetched a Nobel prize 2 years back for an Economist (don't remember the name). I also got some clarity on how the Lippers and Morningstars of the world compute data.

Economics class we studied about the Demand-Supply and finding out the prices given the demand and supply elasticity.

Both the classes were quite informative. I think at this stage, the enthu level of students is coming down. There were lot less questions and students were less vocal.

My plan for today (and until the classes tomorrow which would start at 2:15 PM):

Options:
1. Pre-Read on tomorrow's marketing class.
2. Pre-Read and last week review on Accounting class.
3. Review today's statistics concepts.
4. Review today's economics concepts.
5. Solve economics sample problems.
6. Solve Statistics sample problems.

Decision:
1. Review today's statistics concepts and solve some sample problems (today)
2. Pre-read marketing class material.
3. Pre-Read accounting class material.

More as it happens.