Fooled by randomness

I am pretty sure someone searching for Fooled by Randomness on google or bing or any of the other web search engines isnt going to find this blog entry up there. So if you chanced upon this entry, let it at least direct you to two good books. I read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell followed by the book Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Both books got me thinking about success from a different perspective. Let me talk about what I got out of Outliers first. Malcolm Gladwell talks about hugely successful people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobbs, etc and point out how they could have become who they did because they were born around a certain year and lucked out on many instances. Similarly the month in which hockey players were born could have a more than expected impact on them being successful at their sport measured by having made the national team. I think it is probably true. The question is then, what can we do with that knowledge. Maybe learn to be humble, or think twice before we label someone as successful or unsuccessful.

Now fooled by randomness is also pretty informative. The book again talks about the role luck can have in success and how we label someones flawed strategy as successful solely based on the fact that he was lucky(survivorship bias). Another strategy, probably works better while working with financial markets than with real life is the following.

This is about how when you make a bet you shouldnt confuse probability with expectation. For example if there is a probability that you will make a small amount of money 99.9% of the time but will loose a tonne of money .1% of the time, then you should never make that bet. Because if you do loose you loose everything.

Anyway, both are good books and pretty easy reads.

How to repair the click wheel of an ipod

This is a very specific repair instruction. The click wheel on my ipod stopped working. My ipod stopped working because I left it in my car for a couple of days during the heart of an uber hot summer. The wheel expanded and the center click button twisted out of shape. When I took the ipod to an apple store, they told me that the labor cost for repairing it is so high that I am better off buying a new one.

So I decided to do it myself. To open the ipod and get to the click wheel follow the instructional video given here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqxuQQ9ERS0&feature=related

Once you can pop out the center button of the click wheel, try to see what the problem is. Its an electromechanical contact that is responsible for registering your click. If your situation is similar to mine, due to the expansion of the plastic(or some other mechanical injury) the contact is not being made properly. Inwhich case try folding a piece of paper and placing between the center button and the tiny square button that registers the click. You can use some other small piece that fits too. .

Once this is done, retrace your steps following the video and your are good to go. This is not the most sophisticated fix, but can save you a couple of 100$. I was told that my only other option was to recycle my ipod for 10% of the new ipod I buy from Apple. Its nuts!!

How to find a job in the US after school

Now this is an audacious title. Now I realize that it is audacious and hence I am going to talk about a very specific situation, which is now. The US market as everyone knows is not growing , jobless claims are on the rise. However, there are more students graduating from universities. There clearly is a mismatch between supply and demand. To make matters worse, you might be an international student. There is that added problem of finding a job before your visa expires. I went through a very difficult patch, trying to find a job and thought it would be helpful to systematically talk about how I went about my search. What worked and what didn’t!

Campus Career Council

Most schools have a career council unit. However, not all of them cater toward the needs of an international student. But your first stop should be there. Fix your resume up. Learn the names of companies that visit your school.

Online

Monstor, career builder, dice, yahoo hot jobs should be your next step. Make sure you indicate clearly what you expect and put a comprehensive resume up there.

You can also go to individual company websites and apply directly, filling out their forms and uploading your resume.

Career Fairs

Make sure you go to career fairs. You have a chance to meet face to face with employers and learn about their business. You also get to give your resume.

Cold Calling

Pick up the phone, find the telephone number of the headquarters of a company and call them; give your strongest pitch. Ask if they are hiring, and who would be the best person to talk to.

The reality

The numbers are against you in each of the above methods. There are way too many people applying to way too few positions to get noticed. You have to have a very favorable market atmostphere and an solid dose of luck to make it.

What Works

CONTACTS. What I have learned is that the right hiring manager has to look at your resume. By right I mean, the person should be capable of offereing you a positing if he or she likes you. Many circumstances have to shape up for that to happen.

1. The department/ team is in a hiring mode
2. Your skills set matches their requirements
3. Your expectations matches their ability

Now how do you know if these favorable factors exist? You need to talk to someone who work with this hiring manager. Find out what they are looking for. See if you can modify your resume to best appeal to that team. Make sure that your contact person PHYSICALLY walks over to the hiring manager and places your resume on the hiring managers desk!!! Thats the best way to get noticed. Thats how I got my job!

But what if I don’t know anyone?

Now whose fault is that? Make sure you keep in touch with everyone you know. Make sure you go to networking events and get contact information. And you need to keep mailing or calling to keep you in their minds. The ground work for reaching out to your contacts should be done years in advance.

Laying the ground work

Find out people in potential organizations you would like to work with. Reach out to them. In the first couple of interactions just ask for advice. Small talk! Talk about your passions, your interests, your family. Whatever that you can talk about to connect. You might need to continue this over a year or maybe more. Then when you are in need, you already have someone to turn to. Pick up the phone and insinuate how your career path has been shaped by their advice.

Simple psychology will tell you that no one wants to be wrong. Get them to feel responsible for your career. I dont mean you should say that. That feeling has to develop over time. Another way of putting it is: Get as many people as you can to be excited about your career. Have many mentors. You need people marketing YOU!

My story

I graduated from school without a job. Although I had built up my contact network, I never reached out to them untill I graduated. I felt that I could rely on my career placement unit to find me a job. It didnt happen. Then I reached out to everyone I knew. I also tried every method I listed out earlier. Finally persistance paid off. Someone I knew passed my resume to the right person and I got a call.

Good luck and let me know if you need help with your resume or action plan to approach companies.

Papa Mush Chawal: Easy food recipe 1

That’s right, I am moving on to the era of cooking food from the scratch. The first experiment I tried by myself is outlined here.

papa: Spanish for potato

chawal: Hindi for rice

mush: cool English for mushroom

Ingredients: serves 2

1 potato, 1 tomato, 1 large onion, few chillies and few mushrooms

2 tea cups of rice and 4 table spoons of oil

Method

Cut into small pieces the potato, tomato, onion, chillies and mushrooms. Saute in corn oil or any other oil for about 10 min in high heat. Simultaneously get the rice ready in a rice cooker. Take the sauteed mixture and add a couple of cups of water. Let the watered mixture boil for 5 min in medium heat. Ensure that the entire water does not evaporate. By now the rice should be ready. Mix the rice with the entire mixture and add salt and pepper to taste.

Verdict

A very healthy and really quick meal for you to enjoy!

 Oh and by the way why did I call this dish so? I was learning Spanish in the morning and I was thinking about Hindi in the afternoon.

Blog stat inference

I found the strangest thing happening to my blog over the last couple of days that caused a lot of anxity. The curve that shows the number of people who view my blog everyday suddenly dipped as follows. I have obeserved over the past few months that it generally happens over the weekend implying that most of my readers are people who work in offices with full time jobs. They read the blog during their leasure or when they search during office hours. However, this time the dip extended over the weekend into the next three days. I have been blogging consistantly and have not written anythign offensive so what could have possible caused the dip?

The reason daunt on me when I was talking with my friend today. It seems in India there is a bandh all over Karnataka. More specifically corporations in Bangalore remain closed on account of the Gandhi Jayanthi and the bandh for three days. This explanation perfectly fits into my assumption of most of my readers being office going people with the added conclusion that a good majority of them are in Bangalore.

 Here is the graph for you to infer. Notice the sudden dip in the last part… All because of the bandh! You can probably extend this thought and think about the ramifications to commercial sites that rely on the volume of people who visit the site everyday. I estimate that they too would have faced a similar decrease in traffic.

 

The campout

It would be unfair on my part to not write anything about the camp-out after such a fun and exhausting time. So here goes, even though its past midnight and I am dreadfully tired with absolutely no time for the next couple of days.

Camp-out is more of a tradition. The tickets are to die for. Everyone wants them. There arent enough for every one. I guess it probably started with them thinking of selling the tickets at say some time on some day. People I guess started coming for the tickets and stood in line many days in advance. So the camp out might be an innovative solution to the problem of too many people standing in line from many days in advance. So instead of standing in line they made the rule that the fans have to be somewhere around the the ticket counter. Thus a tradition was born.

The whole camp-out for graduate students is for 36 hours. Typically about 2000 students camp-out. About 1500 make it till the end. And about 700 win the tickets. To spend this 36 hours the students have to invent innovative games and fun events.

Friday night it was all about drinking lots of beer and playing beer die, beer pong and a few other games whose names are pretty awful and needn’t be put up here because I dont want perverted search hits. The basic idea is that you meet lots of people and get involved in the school spirit. Not everyone is a fan of basket ball. But they still camp-out because they want to share in the fun of spending 36 hours with sometimes total strangers and sometimes best friends. At 12 in the night there was plenty of dancing that lasted till 3 AM.

Frequently in between are the checks. A whistle blows at random periods in time when you have to run in and check yourself in. By doing so you let the guys in charge know that you are still camping out and have gone thru the entire thing. Only if you stay till the end do you get a chance to enter your name into the lottery. Then you have a chance, which if you work out the probability comes to somewhere around .3 to win a ticket. To increase your chance of winning what the guys do is decide to form pools. So you maximize your chance of winning. Though I did not win a ticket one guy in my pool of three won a ticket. So I get to go for about 3-5 games.

Saturday we have an option. You can do community service in the morning and miss about 4 hours of camping. Among many options I picked weeding a garden. That was interesting and that garden, a part of duke garden, was in such a bad shape that it was tough differentiating the plants from the weeds.

Saturday evening this MBA student from fuqua was teaching latin dancing. So I went there and got a free lesson in salsa and a couple of other dance forms. That was good fun as well!

Saturday night back to the beer pong, beer die and other unmentionable games. More dancing more flip cup, which is yet another beer game and a bit of sleep.

Sunday morning the tickets were raffled off and the excitement of some major basket ball fan winning a ticket is incredible! It is wonderful to watch! So I was part of a tradition at Duke! Nice

Duke Campout

Basket ball is big in Duke. The motto is “if you arent a fan of basket ball we make you into one by the time you graduate”. So you can imagine what it is to get season tickets to the games. That’s what everyone wants. They are expensive and well limited. But what if you have an opportunity to win them? That is what the camp-out is all about. Graduate students camp-out. Literally we spend one weekend, right from Friday evening to Sunday morning on Duke campus outside. We put up our tents on the parking lots or on the backs of trucks. Bring coolers, grills and other amenities to spend 36 hours out in the open.

During these 36 hours at regular intervals there is a whistle. You need to be at the tent during this whistle. If you make it thru all the whistles then your coupon goes into the lot. Then it is basically a matter of probability that chooses the winners. They say if you are in a team of 10 people the chances are high that you will win at-least a few season passes. This would mean that everyone in the team would get at-least one chance, often many more, to go for the games.

Camp-out for this season is next weekend. Everyone is all geared up with getting the stuff ready. The atmosphere is electric. I am right now a bit confused as to what it is all about. But I am guessing that it will be a lot of fun. 2000 graduate students in a couple of parking lots!1000 season tickets to be won. It doesn’t get better than this. It is a major social networking event as well with people from law school, business school, engineering, life sciences, physics, philosophy, english and well numerous other departments come together for a fun and party time.

And of course there is plenty of opportunity for beer pong. That is the major game during camp-out. Search on google if you dont know what beer pong is all about. Wikipedia also carries some interesting data about beer pong. More on camp-out during the week!!

Schedule of a mad biomedical engineer

Monday
7:30 – 10:00 work at the coffee shop
10:20 – 11:50 concepts in neuroscience
1:15 – 3:30 medical device innovation
4:15 – 5:15 seminars in biomedical engineering

Tuesday
8:30 – 9:45 Electrophysiology

Wednesday
7:30 – 10:00 work at the coffee shop
10:20 – 11:50 concepts in neuroscience

Thursday
8:30 – 9:45 Electrophysiology
1:15 – 3:30 medical device innovation

Friday
7:30 – 10:00 work at the coffee shop
10:20 – 11:50 concepts in neuroscience

You might think that this schedule isn’t too hectic. But believe me when I say that it is. Every second I get in between, I carry around my laptop and read/make a report. We get over 100 pages to read every day, two to three assignments and one lab work.

I come back home go for a swim and then get back to work on reading the extra material required about each of the subjects. And of-course wait for friday/saturday night for the big party!!!!

Hey I forgot, we have this elaborate network of friends from across departments to call up and let us know when there is free food. So I get a free lunch and dinner.

Weekly I spend about $25! And make about $50, with mininal amount of work! Good life right now.

Planning Ahead

  Today I learnt the significance of planning ahead. A week ahead in my case for my US trip. Under my mothers initiative I packed my bags, finished my documents and visits about a week in advance. I couldn’t figure out the significance of doing so until two days back when suddenly a had a pain in my tooth and had to get my wisdom tooth extracted. That led to complications with excessive bleeding and today they figured out that further procedure and surgery was needed. Finally today I am all sewed up and the stitches are supposed to come ahead of time on Sunday afternoon. That’s about 12 hours before my plane leaves. Fantastic timing if you ask me. Cutting it fine when you least expect it. I have been advised bed rest for the next three days.

  That puts me out of all the other work that I would have to do had I left it for the last week. So again to all those guys who are planning on a long trip abroad finish your work at least a week in advance; you never know what’s going to happen on the last week.
 
 Get a travel insurance. For about 1000 bucks you can get insured for a month. ICICI does that. It’s a pretty interesting insurance that covers even your bail in case you get arrested!! The only downside of this insurance is their dental coverage, which is only 250$ and 100$ comes as the deductibles. So as far as dental coverage is concerned this in insufficient. And get your teeth checked over here well in advance and resolve all potential problems. Dental care is expensive in US. Believe me its expensive. It works out cheaper to plan a trip home, et the care and fly back. Still you end up saving money!!!

  Pack your bag a week in advance and keep extra space. The last minute always extra stuff come in. Don’t keep all your medicines in one bag. Separate it into your check in and carry on luggage. Carry multiple copies of contact numbers.

  Get your travelers checks and currency well in advance. What if you find a strike or a Bandh, if you leave it to the last day.

   Well these are some of the things I thought of recently.

Traveling to US for Masters

   Next Monday I’ll be off to Duke and the following are the considerations and understandings I have had over the week and expect for the next week.

1. Insurance.

Q. Should I take the Duke insurance or should I take one from India?

A. I have to take the one offered by the university as it is compulsory.

Q. Should I take travel insurance?

A. I decide not to since I don’t expect any major mishaps. FYI travel insurance covers medical problems, theft of luggage, problems arising out of misplaced passport/ documents, missed flights delayed flights, loss of luggage and so on.

       The airline can be held responsible for delayed luggage and you should do the following to minimize the risk.

       Preserve the slip indicating the number and code of the luggage checked in. It is your only proof that you have checked in luggage.

       Carry all your important documents in your hand luggage. Keep some clothes in your hand luggage.
        If you do not find your luggage at the destination along with you inform the airline immediately and ask for compensation. Generally the airline will pay you per day for delayed luggage!

2. Fees

    I was paranoid for most of the last week as I had not paid the university anything, I haven’t registered for courses and I haven’t paid for my accommodation. When I inquired I found that the general practice is that universities generate bills after a certain period into the course. You are expected to pay for the course then.

Q. How do I pay for the course and other fees?

A. On arrival at the university the first thing I have to do is open a bank account. Then I will wire transfer the money into the account from India.

Q. When should I pay my fees?

A. A good practice is to delay the payment of the fees as much as possible. By doing so, you open up possibilities of finding last minute aid. And since you have not availed the loan, you will not have to pay the interest on the loan. This saves a substantial amount.

3. Medicines

   In America it is not possible to buy medicines off the counter. You need to have a prescription and that too from a specific source. To avoid incurring this cost carry all the medicines you need for at least a year with you. Customs will find no fault with this. Figure out your common ailments and allergies and carry medicines for that. It is a highly
specialized list that you need to prepare by yourself.

4. POE

  The port of entry is where you enter the United States for the first time. This is where you expect all your clearance. Be sure to have your Visa, passport and I20 with you. You will also need to have your address where you will be staying with you. Also expect to be questioned a few questions regarding how you are planning to fund your studies.