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.