A debate on devices like iPhone

Tanuj: when are you getting iPhone

Tanuj: Pranav got one

Vikas: no iPhone it s very inefficient device

Vikas: it s lie burning your hard earned money

Tanuj: don't tell that to Pranav

Tanuj: he is a big fan

Vikas: i mean there is surely a hype and brand of apple products

Vikas: but if you want to talk analytically, it s very easy to prove that it s very inefficient, both feature wise and money wise.

Vikas: e.g it will have 100 features which they show in ads etc.. and create all the hype

Vikas: but once u have the phone all you "need" is 2 feature

Vikas: need is a keyword here

Vikas: of course u can force your lifestyle to read email in toilet" but that s making life more complicated and inefficient, I would say.

Tanuj: well, that’s true for your Bluetooth phone also

Vikas:  ok, someone wants a debate here.

Vikas: let see.

Vikas: did u read all my messages.

Vikas: in last 3 min;

Tanuj: yes i did

Vikas: ok

Vikas: so no rephrase your point of my BT phone set

Tanuj: bluetooth is also added convenience rather than need...isn't it ?

Vikas: ok

Vikas: got it

Vikas: "Added convenience"

Vikas: don’t say antying till I say OVER.

Tanuj: ok

 

Vikas: when wheel was invented, it was an "added convenience".

Vikas: but it instead of adding complication in life, it in fact simplified your life.

Vikas: so the way i look at it:

Vikas: whether the new feature is simplifying something that i already do/face in my lifestyle

Vikas: or if it is just adding a convenience in my life which is not required.

Vikas: e.g  who can justify reading email on iPhone in toilet?

Vikas: unless you are CEO of a company or President etc.

Vikas: 99.99999% are not.,

Vikas: OVER

 

Tanuj: I am no salesman for iPhone, but this is what the iPhone customers will say -

Tanuj: toilet email is not the only thing..we use iPhone and use it a lot..e.g. navigation feature, fast internet on the go, indispensable for travel for entertainment, communication, information etc...not as a need but as simplifying smth you already do

Tanuj: and not to forget variety of apps that keeps you involved for better or worse

Tanuj: of course it costs money but if I can afford it I don't mind owning it

Tanuj: OVER

 

Vikas: 1. navigation feature: in my exp i am yet to see a car driving with a phone tilted and hooked in car dash. inf act anyone who buys a 30,000 car, will immediately buy a $200 dedicated in-car-staying gps device

Vikas: what i have found instead is that in very big metros (bigger than MSP maybe) where ppl have veyr big downtowns and 1000 restaurants to pick from.. there they find mobile phone based navigation useful. them using it, i can see the logic as no one takes the GPS out of car when you go out walking n downtown, but now how big is that class. i doubt it if it is big enough.

Vikas: for 90% people, really, they can force themselves to use it as a navigation device, but then they better not buy another device for their car, coz the moment they do it, it will make their iPhone inefficient.

Vikas: 2. fast internet on the go. it has two parts, "fast" and "on the go"

Vikas: "fast" is just an eyewash, and  no intelligent person should use it in argument.

Vikas: unless you really have data to back it up and prove it that the fastness is significant.

Vikas: "on the go" ...how much time of one’s day a person is "on the go"

Vikas: out of that how much time he or she is not driving

Vikas: and out of that how much time he or she really need internet.

Vikas: what left after these many "out of thats" will be extremely extremely small.

Vikas: 3. indispensible for travel for entertainment.. here all they are doing is using it as mp3 player.. which all of their past phones and existing phone can do without costing them a dime.

Vikas: a little percentage might classify entertainment while travel as reading news or info while traveling in subway.. i wud say that is no better than having a nice conversation with your co passenger in subway.. you will be more social and happy

Vikas: 4. communication::

Vikas: talk or email

Vikas: talk is the only feature which is really why phones are there so no argument on that front.

Vikas: email, now again, you have to be really really busy person like CEO etc to read and write your email via phone. writing email on phone is not easy and PC are so ubiquitous

Vikas: so all these features..they have 10% "Simplification of existing things" and 90% of "complication via new things"

Vikas: OVER

 

Tanuj: wow!

Tanuj: a much longer debate could ensue if you were talking to an iPhone fan, but I will briefly say this

Tanuj: suppose you have a all in one device...may not be the best in each of its features, but good enough, and suppose you get it for very cheap..most people would like to have it..

Tanuj: the question of money is purely economical. right now it is expensive because it caters only to those who think they can afford it and probably because it has no other real competitor in its class

Tanuj: sooner or later it will be cheap or other cheaper devices will be in the market

Tanuj: rest of the points are quite subjective and varies with personal point of view

Tanuj: I know at least 3 graduate students who own it and swear by it despite paying heavy bucks for it..that says smth, personally i wouldn't be getting it during my graduate studies at least

Tanuj: OVER

 

Vikas: i will go in reverse order this time.

Vikas: 1. who owns it and swears by it after paying heavy money...

Vikas: they can afford it. its their earned money. freedom of expression and choice.people derive happiness through various artifacts. these artifacts re function of their background, the way the look at ads, the amount  of thinking they do in whatever angle they bring into the analysis etc.

Vikas: it says "smth" but that smth is about them and not about the device or artifact.

Vikas: 2. subjectivity.

Vikas: logic is absolute not subjective to ppl's perception

Vikas: all the points i made, which you said could be subjective, were kind of examples to what i said earlier that:

Vikas: A. whether the new feature is simplifying something that i already do/face in my lifestyle

B. or if it is just adding a convenience in my life which is not required.

Vikas: A and B can be argued.

Vikas: 3. sooner or later they will become cheap

Vikas: and also obsolete.. moreover the primary market of these phones do not buy these now-cheaper phones.. so even if they become cheap, it s not affecting its map on the face of America. it s not helping ppl have a cheaper device.

Vikas: when these device become cheaper they become cheaper becoz they get  replaced by other new expensive devices..

Vikas: so if u consider "Active" device as any device which ppl are really buying..it will always  come from "expensive" class rather than

Vikas: "now-cheaper" class.

Vikas: so practically speaking, they are always expensive.

Vikas: 4. no real competitor..

Vikas: now who wants to make a phone with 100 features when they know ony 2-5 is what caters to 95% ppl

Vikas: there is no market to compete

Vikas: if i m a businessman i wud like to make a phone with 7 features which caters to 95% ppl. and happily choose not to compete with iPhone.

Vikas: OVER

 

Tanuj: ok, well you have a point. However, those who use it think it is smth that simplifies they need to do. Could be a false perception, i don't know.

Tanuj: when wheels were invented, let’s say cars, it was affordable to only a few and it was'nt a real need then, only after the technology matured and mass produced, everyone starts using it, same is with GPS, many do without it those who afford make their lives simpler by paying for it. I understand your point to this view so you need not reiterate, the discussion's already quite long

Vikas: car was a real need, it was just prohibitively expensive.

Tanuj: transport is always a need

Tanuj: ultimate transporter is the fictitious teleporter that should replace all transportation

Tanuj: ppl. pay for Mercedes when they can do with corolla

Vikas: that was what i said in " 1. who owns it and swears by it after paying heavy money... "

Vikas: it says about ppl and not about merc or Toyota.

Tanuj: right, exactly your point

Tanuj: if you have money to spare let the leechers have it

Vikas: fine with me

Vikas: my only point is when ppl say they want iPhone or merc, they don’t say this point : "if you have money to spare let the leechers have it"

Tanuj: long debate..post it somewhere for public to see

Vikas:

Vikas: sure shud be archived

Vikas: for the guilty pleasures of iPhone owners

Tanuj: would you mind if I let iPhone users read this ?

Vikas: i dont mind at all.

Tanuj: lets see if some smeltering rocks fall onto KC

A clever bias in IIMs selection process

Indian Institute of Managements (IIM) are very important national schools in India for management studies, however, the executives of these school have been partly successful in "gearing" it towards an organization that serves their own ideologies rather than a nation's. Of course, the extent of this "gearing" varies from school to school (there are several schools part of IIM system, e.g. IIM Ahmadabad, Bangalore, etc.) based on their reputation and clout. For example, a new school can not afford to be secretively selective for obvious reasons.

In this article, I will try to present one example to illustrate this "gearing".

AN EXAMPLE:

IIM Ahmadabad (IIM A) calls for GD/PI (Group discussion/Personal Interview) based on following composite score (CS), [see link 1 at the bottom for reference, which is the latest info]:

CS = 3(your percentile - cut-off percentile) + AP

where AP = P1 + P2, where P1 is calculated for class X score and P2 for class XII as follows: P1 = 8 if >= 90% in X, 6 if <90 and >=80%; 4 if <80 and >=70%, 2 if <70 and >=60%,Same way for P2.

Lets say 'your percentile' = 100 (please note that this is the maximum, so this is a worst case analysis)
'cut-off percentile' = 98 (generally IIM A CAT cut-off percentile is very close to 100, in this example I assumed it to be 98, which happens to be their cut-off for CAT-2008, if you have a better number, please feel free to use that).

lets say you had 90% plus in both X and XII, so that gets you an AP=16, and a CS = 22 (that s the maximum possible CS). Chances of 'your' getting a call from IIM A is 100%.

Next consider another CAT student, SHE ALSO HAS THE SAME 100 percentile as 'yours', but has only 79% in her class X and XII each. So her AP = 8 and CS = 14. Do you see any chance for her? Let us see how much that is: say there are 1000 calls for GD/PI (which is an overestimate, they do not call these many, but this is a worst-case analysis so let it be 1000). That means after calculating CS for all CAT students (roughly around 3,00,000), they will pick top 1000. Now only way for her to have a chance is in top 1000 is that there are less than 1000 CAT appearing guys out of 3,00,000 who have more than 80% score. that is to say, in a class of 300 students only one is getting more than 80% score, where in India, which board, does this happen? Ok, for an example, as per 2009 CBSE result [see link 2 at the bottom for reference], there were about 5% people scoring more than 90%, that is like 15 in a class of 300 (where if remember from few lines back, only one in 300 is called for GD/PI). Thus, her chance of getting a call from IIMA is ZERO. In fact, if she even had 89% compare to "yours" 90% she still had ZERO chance, as there will still be 15 guys in front of her for that 1 spot.

If we calculate further, we will see that anyone who has 90% in both X and XII will have an AP = 16, so even if he or she got nothing in his or her CAT, he or she will still be ahead of her!! Her CS is 14 even though she has 100 percentile in CAT!! So her chance of getting a call will be non-zero only if there is not even a single student in a set of 300 student writing CAT who has more than 90%, likelihood of this is zero as there are already 15 (>95%) in a set of 300 just based on CBSE results and if you safely assume that twice the number of people are there between 90 and 95 (i.e. 45 out of 300 >90%) and say 1 in 50 such extremely high acad student write CAT (i.e. very close to 1 out of 300 > 90% and writing CAT). YOu will say it is still close to1 and not 1 so there is a room for her, then please do not forget that we have not at all counted student between 80% and 90% , if you count them in, then she has ZERO theoretically estimated possibility of getting a call.



1. http://202.41.76.206/website%20shortlist%20note%202009-11.pdf
2. http://www.cbse.nic.in/statistics/other_statistics_x_2009.doc

END OF EXAMPLE


This was one example how IIM A gears to select people of their "liking" regardless of fairness. I can do one more example about how IIM Bangalore (IIM B) does the similar gearing, but I think i will let the interested reader, use the link 3 below, to do this excercise (a hint, in IIMA CS, CAT has a weigtage of 6/22=27% and school marks has a wt of 73%, in IIM B, the "CS" has 20% for CAT and 40% for school marks, for details see the link 3)

3. http://hrm.iimb.ernet.in/cat2008/PGP-Admission-Process-2009.pdf



IIM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Management