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.