Carpe Diem

Salute to Kumble

2008-11-02T10:27:00.000-08:00


Pakistan 2nd innings (target: 420 runs)			R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	Saeed Anwar	c Laxman b Kumble	69	157	128	12	0	53.90
	Shahid Afridi	c Mongia b Kumble	41	104	64	7	0	64.06
	Ijaz Ahmed	lbw b Kumble	0	1	1	0	0	0.00
	Inzamam-ul-Haq	b Kumble	6	13	14	1	0	42.85
	Yousuf Youhana	lbw b Kumble	0	1	2	0	0	0.00
	Moin Khan	c Ganguly b Kumble	3	27	20	0	0	15.00
	Saleem Malik	b Kumble	15	67	59	3	0	25.42
	Wasim Akram	c Laxman b Kumble	37	87	66	7	0	56.06
	Mushtaq Ahmed	c Dravid b Kumble	1	36	13	0	0	7.69
	Saqlain Mushtaq	lbw b Kumble	0	1	1	0	0	0.00
	Waqar Younis	not out	6	5	5	1	0	120.00
	Extras	(b 15, lb 2, w 2, nb 10)	29

	Total	(all out; 60.3 overs)	207	(3.42 runs per over)

Fall of wickets1-101 (Shahid Afridi, 24.2 ov), 2-101 (Ijaz Ahmed, 24.3 ov), 3-115 (Inzamam-ul-Haq, 28.3 ov), 4-115 (Yousuf Youhana, 28.5 ov), 5-127 (Moin Khan, 36.1 ov), 6-128 (Saeed Anwar, 38.3 ov), 7-186 (Saleem Malik, 54.1 ov), 8-198 (Mushtaq Ahmed, 58.5 ov), 9-198 (Saqlain Mushtaq, 58.6 ov), 10-207 (Wasim Akram, 60.3 ov)


Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
J Srinath	12	2	50	0	4.16	(7nb, 2w)
BKV Prasad	4	1	15	0	3.75	(1nb)
A Kumble	26.3	9	74	10	2.79	(2nb)
Harbhajan Singh	18	5	51	0	2.83

My sister's new website

2008-09-24T01:51:00.000-07:00

Well lucky are those who follow their true passion. All the best to didi for her new venture!

http://preetisingh.net

A Rs. 15 Lakh Mumbai slum!

2008-08-23T02:07:00.001-07:00

Yes, mumbai slums are selling for Rs. 15 lakhs a piece. However, this interesting piece of information is only to grab attention. Truth is I simply want to blog my conversation with a middle aged cab driver in Mumbai on my way to the airport. And the 15 Lakh flat is just one of the many things which came out of it.

The man's name is Sadashiv. He is originally from Karnataka (somewhere near Udupi). He was born poor and had no land in his village. So he came to Mumbai when he was only 15. He has been driving in Mumbai for 25-30 years! Earlier, he used to drive for wealthy individuals who needed personal drivers. Now, he serves vendors that serve multinational clients like my company.

We were going to the airport through Prabhadevi route. There is a one-way in Mahim which can get pretty bad traffic. This naturally got me and Sadashiv chit-chatting. His family includes his wife, three unmarried daughters and a son. He used to live in a Mumbai slum which got destroyed in 1992 blasts. His wife and daughters (who were very young then) got very scared by the blasts and he decided to move to Titwala. If you are from Mumbai and you have been to Kalyan station, you would have heard the announcements "titwala janari local..". In 2006 floods, his slum in Titwala got destroyed. He had bought a TV on loan. The TV stayed drowned in water for 3 days. During this flood, he was stuck in Mumbai. Local trains had stopped. He could not go home for 6 days stuck in the flood. His wife and children had a bad time because the slum was destroyed. They took shelter on one of the floors of an under-construction building. The government gave people like him a flood relief of Rs. 3000.

Sadashiv earns Rs.6000-Rs.7000. He is not very educated. My guess is he is in the middle poor class. His two daughters have studied till 10th. His eldest daughter somehow studied till BA. She also did some computer courses but found it very hard to get a job (my guess is due to english problems). She currently works as a clerk in a factory/godown in rural Karnataka and earns Rs. 2000-3000. Father diligently puts all her earnings in a bank- account. His one other daughter is in rural Karnataka. His son, who is younger in age, goes to school.

Although, Sadashiv is not very educated, he is quite informed and he knows Mumbai. He knows Taj President quite well because he often drives people from hotel to office. He reminisces amusingly about several stuff in Mumbai. For example, (1) before Hiranandani Gardens transformed Powai forever, that place was scary for drivers. Drivers would stop at L&T and not go any further. At night, thugs would manufacture illegal alcohol and loot passers-by. All this right outside the IIT Bombay; (2) another one is the Mumbai airport, which used to look like a bunglow and no bigger; and (3) the fact that Maharashtra has a total of 167 flyovers (sic.). He really knows Mumbai. He knows how much a flat at Malabar Hills cost to the diamond merchants that live there. He told me it would be 20 Crores. Infact, good slum-flats in Mumbai are going for Rs. 15 Lakhs and Rs. 3000 per month rental (these figures are after negotiating!)

Sadashiv is worried though, as is perhaps every middle aged father with three unmarried daughter. "Saab.. apna gaon mein bahut dahej dena padta hai". When I was married or my sisters, he got gold very cheap at Rs. 200-300. Now it is very hard. He doesnt go back home every day, sleeps in car or some place. When he started driving for big seths he got paid Rs. 900 and even today he earns less than Rs. 7000. While he knows people who started in slums in front of his own eyes, and today they own multiple cars and earn in lakhs. (The particular person, we are referring to, made his wealth, through selling alcohol and opening an illegal gambling place. Sadashiv thinks he doesnt have the courage to do such things, his children would become beggars if he went to jail or something.I suppose even Sadashiv knows intuitively what risk-return tradeoff means.

Well thats about it. We reached airport at last!

***

I am not really writing this blog to sympathise with Sadashiv (though it be a nice thing to empathise and if possible help the needy). I am just writing this because on some level, it gives us such a beautiful perspective and makes us humble. We are so caught up in our own little world and problems. There is such a big world out there. There is so much out there that others are going through. There is so much out there to experience. One more thing: Mumbai is bloody expensive!

Astrology - from a new angle (Part II)

2008-02-23T12:46:00.000-08:00

Please read the (Part I) before reading this post.

So you have seen the description of Janam Kundali (Horoscope) and Palmistry as predictive models. In this post I want to describe the extension of the same idea to "Match-Making".

Process Description for Match-Making

Input Variables: Birth - dates, times, locations of the boy and the girl
Output Variables: (Binary Variable) to_marry: whether this couple should marry or not

Now this model has uncanny similarity to many classification problems in real life. Let us take the example of credit cards. Given the knowledge of age, salary, location and many other parameters, a credit card company has to determine whether to give a person a credit card or not.

Typically, the way to do this is to build a logistic regression model where a probability of success is estimated. If the probability of success is above a cut-off the answer is yes else no.

Like I wrote in the last post, the astrologer must have begun with 1000 or so married couples. He/she would have collected all relevant input data and using some expert opinion would have decided that for these couples whether the marriage is successful or not. Based on this data, the astrologer would have had to build a similar model to predict the probability of marital success for a new couple.

Personally, I feel that building this model is slightly tougher than building the ones for horoscope and palmistry. Also, this method is more life-changing and critical. Many couples don't get wed just because this model predicts No!

Furthermore, there are same sample bias and historical "adjustments" to the evolution of the model along the generations. Also just think about this - the drivers which determined whether a marriage is successful or not have changed drastically in the modern world. So, isn't it time for coming up a brand new sophisticated model backed by a robust database of huge number of couples!

I am not sure about the horoscope one, but this one has a business sense. Shaadi.com are you listening?

Astrology - from a new angle (Part I)

2008-02-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

I was playing with this "Kundali" software which gives your horoscope and match-making. While, I was doing this, I began to think how astrology might have evolved.

I think Astrology must have evolved as a simple predictive model. Modern popular models are logistic regression, decision trees and artificial neural network. Our first generation astrologers would not have been so sophisticated and they would hardly have any computing or data collecting power but I believe the basic process must have been the same.

Process Description for Janam-Kundali:
Input Parameters: Gender, Birth Date, Birth Time, Birth Location, Caste, Parameters related to parents.
Output: Janam Kundali (which is actually a set of multiple variables - age, videsh yatra, marriage life, career and so on).
Process: Predictive Modelling

Our first generation astrologer (lets say A) would have figured out that to come up with a predictive model for Janam Kundali, they need a sample of say 1000 individuals (training data). For these individuals, they would also need the relevant data for the output parameters. Now based on such a sample, they would have come up with some kind of "model" - a set of rules or a decision tree which could then be applied on a new person's input variables to get his/her janam kundali.

Due to various difficulties in carrying out such a study, we can argue that such a model would have a large sample bias. An astrologer would have carried out this study mostly in his own neighborhood. Furthermore, this wisdom or model would have been passed to next generation astrologers. The bright ones in the next generation would have "adjusted" the original model so that it would reasonably explain the lives of people nearer to the next generation astrologer.

However, we can clearly see any such "adjustments" would not have been standardized along the generations due to geographic limits. This explains why different astrologers come out with different results.

What I have discussed so far in the context of JanamKundali also applies for Palmistry. Only in that case the input variables are the curvatures on the palm.

So what is the implication of this new angle to astrology? Isn't all astrology bull anyways?
1. Firstly, I am not challenging the assumption that the timing/location of the birth influences the kind of life we may have. This assumption may or may not be wrong. What I am challenging is the way astrological predictive models have probably evolved across time and geographies. I am blaming these models for lack of standardization and huge sample bias. So don't believe what Jyotish ji tells you !

2. Secondly, if you believe that the timing/location of the birth indeed influences the kind of life we may have, please hire me :), I will get an exhaustive database collected and I will build up logistic regression and neural network-models to predict Janam Kundalis! I am serious :)

There is a part- 2 to this post for those who are into analytics.

Pranav

The Timeless Romance

2007-12-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

The moon tonight is so beautiful that it can not be ignored. Its almost full moon, very bright, surrounded by thin clouds, and yet not dominated by them. The buildings, the trees - everything is bathing in the beauty of its light.

And so many of us, ever entangled in our busy lives, still find a moment to appreciate the majestic beauty of the moon. It just comes and makes you wonder, fills you with a feeling that can hardly be expressed.

Romantic. And thats the thing - like a beautiful girl, the moon chose today to come all dressed to fascinate and awe just about everyone. And the moon must have been doing this since thousands of years and will keep doing this for thousands of years. Our great-great-great grandparents would have been enticed like us as will be our great-great-great grandchildren.

Eternal beauty. Sure, 1000 years back, these buildings, this nation was not here. And 1000 years hence they wont stay the same. And yet, a moment like today will still appear and fill someone's heart. From Ahmedabad to Atlanta, from BC to AD - the show keeps screening for everyone.

And the same applies to the ocean at twilight, cloudy mountains at dawn or a starry sky on a moonless night. Some things are just so eternal and timeless. They transcend the barriers of time and space.

A brand new ranking methodology

2007-12-13T04:40:00.001-08:00

Rankings are everywhere! Which is the best IIT? Which one is the best IIM? Which company is the best IT company? Which state in India is the best state?

Rankings excite us. Rankings keep many of us going. Rankings become purpose and goal for some and a thorn in the flesh for others. A magazine like India Today sells many many extra copies of the weekly which has college rankings. People want to see them so much. Infact, I think comparing one entity against another is one of the fundamental human behaviors like love, anger and kindness.

With little help from Google, we can have our own easy way to reliably rank any set of entities. Lets take the task of ranking IIMs. I searched Google News for all the IIMs one by one and just noted the number of hits found from the year 2000-2007. (Filtering the result for past few years is important so that results give a recent picture. This also removes other errors like the one where IIM Calcutta was fetching news from 1800's due to whatever key-word errors). Here are the results -

Entity	Hits (2000-7)
IIM Ahmedabad	3170
IIM Bangalore	2880
IIM Calcutta	1890
IIM Lucknow	1290
IIM Kozhikode	458
IIM Indore	401

Except a few people from IIM Calcutta (no offense, I would feel the same way), most people will actually agree with the rankings here. The first hypothesis for this ranking is -

"A better (or more well known) entity is covered more by the press".

If we think deeper, the reason behind the press covering an entity more than others is because readers want to read and know more about that entity. And the second hypothesis is that -

"Given two entities, people want to know more about a better entity".

There is an assumption without which these two hypotheses will not work.

"Assumption: All the entities under consideration are good and also similar."

For example, even though Bihar is not the best state in India, it makes quite a lot of news for all the wrong reasons - and this method cant be applied to ranking states in India !

Lets have a look at the ranking of IITs by my method.

Entity	Hits (2000-7)
IIT Delhi	6590
IIT Bombay	3670
IIT Madras	3220
IIT Kanpur	1760
IIT Kharagpur	1580
IIT Roorkee	464
IIT Guwahati	378

Clearly the ranking is not perfect because IITB is not at the top :). On a serious note, we can already see flaws - a Delhi will always be more covered than a Kanpur. But for good or bad, we still have to agree with the overall patterns - Roorkee and Guwahati with low scores and other patterns are not completely surprising. And considering the fact that it takes hardly 2 minutes to get these numbers - I think my system has some merit. You are welcome to get your own suitable ranks - for companies, hospitals, hotels or anything you wish. Just keep the hypotheses in mind!

Pranav

The Subprime Gradecard revisited

2007-11-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

A lot of happened since I blogged about the report cards of the investment banks in the wake of the subprime crisis.

The big news is ofcourse the sacking (or early retiring!) of CEO's of Merrill Lynch and the Citigroup. Now this is big for these two banks are giants, and its only loss in one quarter.

While the sacking will be debated in the financial media, let me give the readers some grapevine. People are talking in the industry that the companies which did comparatively well in previous quarter are probably going to do their write-offs in the next quarter. Even Goldman's huge earnings are being seen with doubts with analysts fearing some insider trading at work. So for now, I guess all grades are subject to revision (and most probably downward revision).

The Geek Attack

2007-11-03T03:16:00.000-07:00

I recently started watching the tv-series called "The Big Bang Theory". This is one of the many recent television shows in the US focusing on "geek-humor". There have been numerous shows and movies with a some geeky character to provide some humor. But off-late, you can find fully dedicated geek-shows! I am no television expert, not least the American. Nevertheless, the trend is pretty interesting.

Among TV-shows some of the popular ones would be Numb3rs, Beauty and the Geek and now the Big Bang Theory. I am calling them popular only because I have seen them :), so there might be many others.

There are seminal movies like StarTrek and Matrix - but they are sci-fi's and in my opinion more fi than sci. They are great to watch, esp to kids and adolescents, who love fantasy and comic books. But this new development is different. Its no fantasy. Its pretty scientific. Actors refer to quantum mechanics, particle physics and turing machines all the time. And the directors heavily exploit the stereotypical geeks' struggle with romance. Beauty and the Geek is a reality tv-show based exactly on that theme where geeks and models are paired together to compete with other pairs.

I dont know about the TRP ratings of these shows, but personally I am happy. I guess I can call myself a geek with what I used to do in IIT. And geeks are getting attention (although with some ridicule). Go geeks anyways!

On a sociological level, I think, the average Americans do understand and appreciate the value of these geeks in this world of extremely advance technology. And though the geeks are still mocked, there is this silent admiration which is capturing the attention of the prime time entertainment.

In India, however, it will take many years before jokes on quantum physics are aired on prime time. Geeks are edging ahead in the US but can they take on Ekta Kapoor and her family dramas? I doubt.

Report Card of Investment Banks

2007-10-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

Subject Name: Subprime Crisis
Class: Bulge Bracket Investment Banks
Class Topper: Goldman Sachs
Low Grade: Merrill Lynch, UBS
Average Performance: C

Anyone, who is even remotely interested in global financial markets, must have heard the talk about the subprime crisis and how it has affected the global credit markets.

I have been tracking the developments in US and its the result time. Third quarter earnings of many investment banks are out. Lets have a look at how different banks have performed in the midst of this crisis.

Bank	Write-Off ($ Billions)	Overall Profit	Layoffs
Merrill Lynch	$5.50	Loss	-
Deutsche Bank	$3.12	TBA (Oct 31)	-
CitiGroup	$5.90	Reduced Profits	-
UBS	$3.40	Loss	1500
HSBC*(in Feb)	$10.50	-	750
Bear Stearns	$0.70	62% fall in profits	310
Lehman Brothers	$0.70	3% fall in profits	1200
Goldman Sachs	$1.50	71% increase in profits	-
Morgan Stanley	$2.40	17% fall in profits	-
Credit Suisse	-	-	320
JP Morgan	TBA	TBA	-

The second column denotes the amount of money a particular bank had to "write-off". A bad asset, for example a loan on which the borrower has defaulted, is written-off as a loss.

We can clearly see that Merrill had to write-off a mindboggling sum of $5.5bn resulting in the bank going in the red for the quarter. Only a part of Citigroup's $5.9bn write-off has been due to subprime mortgages. HSBC's write-off is from February. Therefore, Merrill Lynch has, without doubt, been the biggest loser in this crisis. That is hardly surprising because ML is the largest CDO house on the street. Recently two top executives - Head Fixed Income and Head Structured Products were fired from ML. Bear Stearns is another poor performer.

Morgan Stanley is an average performer and considering the tough quarter Lehman must be regarded as a good performer with only 3% fall in profits. But the star performer is, without doubt and without competition, Goldman Sachs! They also had to write off $1.5bn. However, they made huge gains from their short mortgage positions - meaning they bet against the market tide of rising mortgage prices. This resulted in an amazing 71% increase in profits!

JPM's results are yet to come out, but Goldman need not be worried about its topper status. Having said that, many hedge funds failed in this quarter. Two of our poor performers from the above table - UBS and Bear Stearns lost there too. But guess what, Goldman is no alchemist afterall, their hedge funds failed too! But for now, I would still buy their stock. And more hedge funds in another blog.

Meanwhile the last column about layoffs is not encouraging for current MBA students - there have been layoffs all around. It remains to be seen if these banks keep hiring as aggressively as they have been in the past. Many first year students at IIMs would surely be praying for that!

Sayonara.

Evolution of Sports

2007-09-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

I am a "Heroes" fan and I love cricket. So it is no wonder I have chosen to write about evolution of sports inspired by the dawn of Twenty20 cricket!

Everyone loved the recently concluded Twenty20 World Cup Cricket. More so the Indians because we won it. I was listening to Ian Chappel on Cricinfo and he said -

"The game is always going to keep evolving - if it doesn't, it will die."

This made me wonder. Is it true that games need to evolve in order to survive. It definitely sounds true. However, it is really hard to imagine if soccer or hockey or tennis have evolved with time. What is there to evolve in tennis and in football, I thought? In soccer, 2 teams with 11 players each run after a ball and try to put a goal through the opposition's goalpost and prevent the opposition from doing the same. Thats almost too simple to evolve!

So I decided to do some research. Turns out sports indeed have been evolving. But not in a way like cricket has. Technology has changed every bit of our lives and sports are no exception. Bats and balls in cricket, racquet in tennis, sportswear - all these have evolved for all the sports. Media and communication has been revolutionized! Hawk-eye, TV-umpires and so on have totally reformed umpiring in many sports.

However, if we talk about the format - only few sports have shown radical changes. And cricket is definitely up there at the top in this context. From 6 days to 2.5 hours, we have come a long way! And Mr. Chappel, though I love twenty20, I will disagree with you. Sports have managed to survive just fine without evolving so much. Maybe cricket is a special case. Its definitely a special sport!