Things I learn at WIMWI

That the term "Contract killing" is a misnomer.

We have a course called "Legal aspects of Business" (LAB in short) where we learn, well, about the legal aspects of business. The course is handled by a an articulate, bollywood crazy Harvard lawyer. In his inimitable style the prof took us through the nuances of the Contract Law, his sessions peppered with old time Hindi movie dialogues.

Now, contracts are very crucial in business. Almost everything that happens in the real world hinges upon contracts - right from you boarding a bus and paying the conductor to big scale M&As. So, what is a contract? A contract is defined as an agreement enforceable by law. The operative phrase is "agreement enforceable by law". The misnomer becomes clear in the light of this definition.

Entailing the services of a hitman after agreeing upon the service terms is not a contract because the agreement itself is illegal. It is not something enforceable by law. If you engage a small time underworld don to finish off someone but refuse to pay the don after he completes the job then the don cannot go to a court alleging that you have not fulfilled the terms of contract! (Duh) It is not an agreement enforceable by law. Pedantically speaking, it is not contract killing.

Three stories

A quick post to clear those cobwebs around the blog. Things have been hectic since the last post and I have not quite found the time to post anything. I will now post three things, which if I had the time would have been complete posts in their own right.

1) Sarcasm is the best pedagogical tool I have ever come across. Right from my KSR days, I have noticed how the most intelligent and engaging of professors come with that thoroughly enjoyable quality of wit and sarcasm. Here at IIMA, the classes that I enjoy the most are the ones where the professors put down inane CPs with masterful sarcasm. Each comment from the prof exposing that lack of commonsensical thinking and in turn providing an insight into the case we had never thought of before.

2) Economics is fun. Especially microeconomics. Once you get past the fundamentals and learn up a few theories/models, you begin to enjoy the range of questions that economics answers. Some questions we answered in class using microeconomics are: Why doesn't Hrithik Roshan sell insurance? (Opportunity cost) . How do you stop people from lazing around and why does unemployment? (Efficiency wage theory) Why do all frogs croak during the mating season? (Signalling). What should you give your girlfriend on her birthday: gift or cash? (Indifference curves). And a lot more. I think I need to get my hands on that Freakonomics book.

3) Arsene Wenger completes his thirteenth year at Arsenal. He is now the club's longest serving manager. A quote from Friar:

My personal view is that if Arsène wasn't here he'd be running one of a number of major corporations.

Ah, now that is something I always knew :)

Seven habits of highly effective managerial programmers

I have a course called Managerial Computing, spread over slots one and two. It is all about excel and visual basic programming applied to solving managerial problems and decision making. The professor for that course (Prof. Rao) is easily the most humorous, entertaining, exciting and intellectual person I have ever studied under. The classes are always much fun with Dr.Rao making even the most mundane and dreary of codes come alive with his witticisms and punchlines. I cannot remember a class which has gone by without us thumping our desks and erupting with laughter at something really witty that the professor has said.

The module got over yesterday and fittingly, the class gave him a standing ovation. I have tried to put down here some of the funny advice that he gave in class. I call it the "Seven habits of highly effective mangerial programmers."

1. Be anti-Kabir in your approach towards excel programming. (For the unitiated, anti-Kabir is a philosophical position which goes against the much revered time management teachings of Kabir (Kal karai so aaj kar..blah blah). Anti-Kabir, as you might have guessed, is "Don't do today what you can do tomorrow and don't do tomorrow what you can do the day after".)

2. When in doubt, right-click.

3. Subject the screen to a "Stare Test". Most often the thing that you are looking for is somewhere there.

4. Things as simple as conditional formatting can give your non-MC friends (read: non-wimwi) an inferiority complex.

5. Take coffee breaks. Often. Like right now.

6. Be careful about the code you develop, as Microsoft might be lurking around to steal your ideas. They stole our =AVERAGEIF()

7. Money works, in life and in excel. When you want your cell references to behave, give them the $$ they want.

My favourite quip was when he said, "=INDEX(range, 1,0) is like Hanuman bringing the entire mountain when he did not know where sanjivani was." Lol. All managerial programmers can laugh now.

A picture is worth a thousand rational arguments

Lol! One of the best Calvin and Hobbes strips ever! (Click on picture for a larger view)

The Arsenal

The new season is here. Go Gooners!

Quick Gun Murugan

Check out this trailer for a new spoof movie called "Quick Gun Murugan". I especially love the bit in the end where he makes that jade guy pronounce "zh". I wish I had a revolver whenever someone called me "Tamilmarai".

The things I learn at WIMWI : Part1

That textbooks can lie. Sample this question from my Microeconomics midterm paper today:

Q6) The following statements have been taken from your prescribed textbooks "Microeconomics" by David Salvatore and "Microeconomics" by Pindyck and Rubinfeld. Evaluate the statements and write "True" or "False" in the space provided.

WTF? Yes. It was an open book exam and having never given an open book exam before, I went to the exam low on preparation and high on confidence, thanks to the two fat books I could open and refer at any point of time during the exam. But wham! The question went on to list seven statements, alongwith the page numbers and paragraph numbers of where the statements appear in the textbooks. You could almost hear the professors snarl "Ya, go ahead and refer your textbooks. Muhahaha!"

Pindyck and Rubinfeld are MIT pofessors in Economics, and I am supposed to evaluate whether the statements they made in their highly popular textbook were correct or incorrect. Okay.

This post, hopefully, will kick start something of a series(which explains the "Part 1" in the title). I felt that this was the only way I could blog about anything of relevance, as I seem to be spending all my waking hours learning something at this wonderful place.