Author: SK

SPinky

My cousin has coined the word “spinky” – a portmanteau of Spain (where the wife now lives) and Pinky (the wife’s primary nickname). Actually I’m not sure if it’s my cousin or her three year old son who coined the word but it sounds cool.

And considering that spinky anagramizes to skimpy when written in Kannada I think it’s rather cool. I don’t know why but I’m suddenly reminded of our engagement cake where we’d got “skimpy weds pinky” or some such thing inscribed. I have no clue why I got that written (I admit it was my choice) but I had to take uncomfortable questions from relatives as to why I’m named skimpy (pinky was coined by her parents and can be considered to be a natural diminutive of Priyanka so that’s more explainable).

One side effect of that inscription on the engagement cake is that all my friends know the wife as “pinky”. So this conversation actually happened last month.

Me: so Priyanka was saying ..
He: who’s Priyanka?
Me: my wife
He: oh you mean pinky?

And considering that pinky doesnt particularly like to go by “pinky” (she prefers the other diminutive Pri, which was coined by some friends) she’s going to great lengths to get her friends in Spain to call her Pri.

But spinky sounds so cool it’ll be a travesty if it doesn’t catch on. So if you’re in barcelona now and are part of Pinkys regular play group please make sure you call her pinky and don’t let her get away with being called Pri. For pinky is so much cooler you know. And spinky is even cooler!

Spain + Pinky = SPinky, wife of SKimpy.

Chatting and messengers

So the wife has just moved abroad and I haven’t even bothered getting international calling enabled on my mobile phone. It’s not that I’m not concerned about keeping in touch with her – it’s more to do with the plethora of options to keep in touch with her than a normal phone call.

Firstly there’s whatsapp, which I’ve used for the last two years (the trigger to join whatsapp was the limit in the number of text messages one could send per day which was introduced in 2012 as a “rumour prevention mechanism”). A large number of people on my contacts list use WhatsApp, which means that it is extremely rare that i use normal text messaging to connect to them.

And earlier today, while she was waiting for a connection at Frankfurt airport, the wife asked me to install Viber, saying it allows us to talk without any international dialing cost. I just had a brief conversation with her and the quality was extraordinary (especially given i’m on a weak BSNL broadband here and she was in a car there). Then I looked at my contacts who are on viber, and the number of my contacts who are using Viber is insanely high! Almost makes me seem foolish for not joining in so far.

And then earlier today I spoke to someone in Singapore using Skype. Call quality wasn’t that great – we dropped a couple of times – but it was still pretty good. And then there is google hangouts. And then there is apple’s facetime (perhaps the main reason the iPad fell my side when we were dividing our assets prior to the wife’s move is that I could have an Apple device with me so that we can FaceTime!).

The number of options for messaging is so large that I wonder how long the whole calling and messaging model will continue. I had shown in a recent blog post (on my public policy blog) that the number of SMSs sent per user in India peaked three years ago and has then been on a secular decline. And now there is news that the telecoms regulator in India is thinking of instituting a fee on providers such as WhatsApp and Viber because of the revenue losses they are causing to the mobile phone service providers in India (like Airtel, Vodafone, etc.).

The question therefore is what the future of telecom will look like given the large number of internet based reliable communication providers who are springing up. My prediction is that the phone call is not going to die – what sets apart a phone call from a Voice over IP connection (such as Skype or Viber) is that it is “online” (i forget the technical term for it – ok got it it’s “network switching” as opposed to “packet switching” which is how the internet works).

To explain that in English, when I talk to you over the phone (normal phone call) there is a dedicated line that goes out from me to you. Basically your telecom provider and mine and the network interchange come together so that a virtual line is drawn from me to you, and this is exclusive for us as we talk (call dropping on mobile phones happens when we try to move from one “cell” to another and get lost in between).

The internet doesn’t work that way. When I send you a “voice message” over the internet, it goes one hop at a time. There is no dedicated line from me to you. The reason we are now able to voice chat online reliably is that the bandwidth available is so much that packets usually get connected quickly enough (think of a bus network so dense that you can change buses instantly to get to your destination – it virtually simulates a “direct bus”). When the network is busy or the bandwidth clogged, however, there might be some delays (while a phone call once connected remains connected).

Given this distinction the phone call offers a level of reliability that packet switching based voice messengers can never reach. And there will always be a market for extremely high reliability. Hence the phone call is not going anywhere.

The SMS, on the other hand, is again packet switched, and a mechanism in which carriers could extract large amounts of money. The SMS will soon die a natural death – kept alive only by means of government mandated services such as two factor authentication of credit card transactions.

While the fees on carriers such as Viber might become a reality in a place like India they are unlikely to sustain as international norms become uniform. What we are likely to see instead is mobile carriers coming to terms with existence of such providers, and some interesting internet pricing plans.

Currently, to use Viber for a fair bit you need a fairly high FUP (fair usage policy) limit on your phone (carrying voice digitally takes a lot of bandwidth). Carriers might introduce some kind of a graded payment structure such that they can partly recover (through higher internet charges) the lost revenues thanks to lost call charges.

If any mobile phone operator is reading this and needs help on devising such pricing mechanisms, feel free to use my consulting services. Among other things in the past I’ve done revenue management for airline ticketing and cargo (the holy grail of revenue management) while working for Sabre – the pioneer in revenue management.

Bachelor notes: day zero

I’m writing this having just dropped the wife at the airport. I’m taking the bus back home. While it helps that this bus goes 200m from my house and i saw it leave just when I was ready to leave the airport, I realize that with the wife not at home there’s no incentive for me to get home asap. A little delay doesn’t hurt!

And to think that the last time I took the airport bus home was one week shy of five years ago, which was a month before I first met the lady who is now the wife!!

While I’m at it I’m suddenly reminded of the time eleven years ago, when I was at IIT and decided I wanted to “slow down the pace of life”! And my way of achieving that was by selling my cycle!

Something tells me I’ve written about this recently on the blog but I’m on the mobile and hence too lazy to check right now!!

Back to bachelorhood

Starting tonight I’ll be a bachelor once again. For the next nineteen months or so. No it’s not that I’m returning my post graduate diploma and hence getting this downgrade (it’s been a while since I cracked a bad joke here so I’m entitled). It’s that the wife is going away. To get herself an MBA (yes I know that after this she will be better qualified than me since she’ll be getting a proper MBA while i have a post graduate diploma only. Maybe I can retire soon? ).

She’ll be going off to Barcelona tonight. The original plan had me moving there too. But then classic old NED happened and I ended up not looking for a job or assignment there and since it’s not an inexpensive place to stay I’m staying back. Plan to visit her every once in a while. And even though tickets to Europe are prohibitively expensive I now have a place to go to in case I need a break.

But for that I need to first get myself a visa. I guess one of my chief tasks in the next few days will be to get this bit of business done. But then I have my own business.

Regulars on this blog might be aware that I haven’t had formal employment for close to three years now. I freelance as a quAnt consultant – helping companies figure out how to make use of the volumes of data they collect in improving their business decision making. It’s been doing quite okay but my plan is to use the next few months when I don’t have any domestic commitments to see if I can take it to the next level.

It might also be pertinent to mention here that the first bit if business I got for this particular venture was through this blog – the last time I put out a post like this one a long time reader who was looking for quant assistance left a comment here and that led to a rather fruitful assignment. Perhaps mentioning this here might result in a repeat?

Now that I’m blogging more than I used to in the recent past I’ll also be using these pages to keep you updated on the long distanceness. I’ve also noticed that since I last put the update on leaving twitter and Facebook that there’s some more activity here. Keep that flowing and I hope for some good conversations on the comment pages here.

Ordering in large groups

When you go out in a large group, ordering can sometimes become a pain. This is especially the case if you know each other well and want to collectively share a large number of dishes rather than each person ordering a dish for herself. Usually, you can end up either under ordering (I’ve seen cases where three curries have been ordered for a table of ten people) or over ordering (when lots gets left over). And someone or the other is usually left unsatisfied.

There are two extremes in which collective ordering for a large group can actually work. At one extreme, there is one “leader”, whom everyone else trusts to order. The leader finds out the group’s preferences and aggregates them and takes the decision on the group’s behalf. Usually the leader is someone who is trusted, so their decisions are generally followed. There might be some inefficiencies but the rest of the people can focus on the conversation while the leader can bask in the glory of power.

The other extreme that works is completely decentralized ordering, like we did last night when I met a bunch of relatives. People trickled in slowly, and we found it was not feasible (for the butterflies in our stomachs) to wait for the whole group to arrive before we started ordering. And so I ordered a pizza and a pitcher of sangria (when in a large group you don’t need to specifically target who is going to consume the pizza and each glass of sangria – it gets aggregated over). I took a slice of the pizza and a glass of the sangria, and the rest actually disappeared rather quickly.

As people came in, they got the hint, and we never had to waste any time in discussions of the “shall we order this” sort. People kept ordering what they wanted, and since we had an implicit agreement of “sharing”, everything presently got consumed. That we were collectively full was indicated by the point in time when no one was ordering. It turned out to be a fantastic dinner.

Now, there are some conditions that need to be met for this kind of ordering to work. Firstly, there should be no one in the group who is shy or hesitant to order by themselves or requires pampering – such people will end up hungry in this situation. Secondly, there should be some sort of implicit trust in the  group that people will be somewhat reasonable in their order. Finally, given that the only way to split the bill in such situations is equally (since who ate what is rather fuzzy) “tragedy of the commons” should not happen. All conditions were broadly satisfied last evening, and (in my opinion) things worked out.

What kind of ordering algorithms have you used in the past, and how has that fared? Do you think decentralized ordering actually works, or if there are other conditions that need to be satisfied for it to work? Do leave a note on your experiences with ordering!

The Afghan elections were rigged

That’s what I conclude in a piece I’ve written for Mint which got published today.

I analyze the last digit of the vote tally of different contestants in different provinces, and find an unusually large number of numbers that end in zero – the odds of this happening at random are at most 2.25%, I conclude.

You might be aware that I’ve been doing this series on elections for Mint for over a year now. Since the Indian elections are over, and steam is yet to pick up for state elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand I’m dabbling a bit in analysis of international elections. If there’s something potentially interesting that you want me to analyze, do drop a note here.

Buy me an Ardbeg

On one of my other blogs I have analyzed which is the most “different” single malt. It turns out it is Laphroaig, which I recently tasted for the first time and absolutely love.

My all-time favourite single malt, however, is Talisker. In the blog post I wrote last night, I also analyzed single malts which are similar to other single malts. The analysis revealed that the three single malts which are closest to Talisker are Clynelish, Ardbeg and Oban.

Coming back to the list of most unique whiskies, my analysis revealed that there are three whiskies whose degree of uniqueness is much higher than that of the others. One, as I mentioned earlier is Laphroaig. Then, there is Lagavulin, which the similarity table says is close to Laphroaig. And the third? Ardbeg.

So Ardbeg is this rare whisky (similarity score of only ~60%), and which is 95% similar to Talisker, my all-time favourite whisky. So the next time you want to impress me, you know what to get!

The most unique single malt

There might have been a time in life when you would’ve had some Single Malt whisky and thought that it “doesn’t taste like any other”. In fact, you might have noticed that some single malt whiskies are more distinct than others. It is possible you might want to go on a quest to find the most unique single malts, but given that single malts are expensive and not easily available, some data analysis might help.

There is this dataset of 86 single malts that has been floating about the interwebs for a while now, and there is some simple yet interesting analysis related to that data – for example, check out this simple analysis with a K-means clustering of various single malts. They use the dataset (which scores each of the 86 malts on 12 different axis) in order to cluster the malts, and analyze which whiskies belong to similar  groups.

Continue reading “The most unique single malt”

Slowing down

Back in 2003, when I was in my third year at IIT,  I thought that “life was going too fast”. That too many things were happening all the time and I had no time for anything. I decided to respond to that by purposely slowing down my life. I gave away my bicycle (which was the primary means of transport at IIT) and started walking. This meant I had to leave ten minutes earlier for class each morning, but given I would wake up early this wasn’t an issue. What this ensured was that I had time to think, to introspect, and to do things at my own pace rather than let other things drive my life.

In January this year I went off Twitter. Twitter was being too much of a time sink, and was taking too much mindspace so i decided to get off. the abstention lasted a month. I sought to make a ‘limited comeback’ in February so that I could plug my pieces in Mint, among other things. However, that soon turned into a full-scale comeback and in the last month or two I’ve been looking at twitter while trying to put myself to sleep, and again as soon as I wake up.

So I’ve decided once again to slow things down. I’m off twitter and facebook. I hope this one will last longer than my last attempt. The reason this time is a combination of the time sink that these networks were proving to be and the overall negativity that was being transmitted through these networks – facebook has stopped being a place where people share photos and quirky messages – it’s all outrage and flame wars there. Twitter has always been that way. I realized these were affecting me negatively to a significant extent, and so I’m off.

So far there have been no withdrawal symptoms, but I’m formulating a policy for that. If there’s something I want to say, there are two ways I’m going to say it in – I’ll either expand and elaborate and write a blog post ( you are likely to see more action on this blog and on my other two blogs in the next few months), or I’ll decide which specific person I want to tell what I wanted to tell, and tell that person! Broadcast is simply a waste of time.

My policy as of yesterday afternoon:

  • No twitter
  • No facebook
  • More email
  • More google hangouts
  • More whatsapp
  • More phone calls
  • More reading books
  • More writing blogs

And hopefully I can even resume on that book of which I’ve only written the preface.

I returned last night from a walk, and instinctively reached for my phone to check twitter and facebook. And then realized those two apps have been uninstalled. I wanted to switch on my PC and just “generally be online”. But then realized that most of my “generally being online” was to be online on twitter and facebook. With those two out, there was no use of “being online”.

And then I saw my kindle, and spent the next four hours continuing a book I’d left midway a month back. I woke up this morning and switched on the computer, and have been “generally online” but reading emails and writing blogs. I like this already, and hope this can sustain.

Last week someone told me that I’m a “natural blogger”. The meaning of this term wasn’t clear to me until he said “I assume you can write a blog post in like 45 minutes?” 45 minutes is the upper end of the time i take to write a blog post. I normally do one in 20. Maybe it’s a sign and I should get back to doing more of this.

PS: This also means that the only way I can talk to you, the reader, is through the comments section of this blog. I promise to be more responsive here and engage in a conversation.

Impact of online retail on offline retail

The other day we had to buy a couple of electronics items, and we went to this long line of electronic stores close to home. Since what we were looking for was closer to the long tail, we eschewed the small “standalone” stores and went to the chain stores. And the service at each store was simply underwhelming.

Sales staff seemed extremely demotivated, and seemed to have no incentive to make a sale. There seemed to be no senior sales staff around who would guide these staff to serve us well. They just stood by standing around, and the only thing they did was to pull out the item that we requested, and then look at the price tag and tell us the price.

With the coming of online retail, one reason for people to shop offline is service. When we had to buy a refrigerator recently, we wanted some human help in determining the pros and cons of various brands, and which are the faster selling ones. And off we went to the nearby (standalone, non-chain) “white goods store”. And we had booked a refrigerator on our way out!

What online sales is doing is to set a higher bar for salesmanship in offline stores, and stores need to recognize this. Just standing around when a customer shops and showing him price tags will not cut it any more – what offline stores need to figure out is what service they can offer that online stores don’t. And provide that aggressively, in order to not lose business to the e-retailers.

Another advantage for offline stores is in terms of letting the customer touch and feel the goods – a refrigerator or a washing machine or a television, for example. The downside is that inventory costs can be prohibitive and there are only so many models that the retailer can put on display – but then based on sales patterns they can choose which models to actually put on display (the top selling ones).

One reason mobile phone sales have so easily moved online (Moto and Xiaomi, for example) is that even at an offline retailer you don’t have much opportunity to touch and feel a mobile phone – in a large number of cases it’s dummy models that are stuck there rather than working ones, and that doesn’t particularly add value to the customer in terms of purchase decision.

Finally, based on my limited sampling of “white goods” stores on 10th Main, Jayanagar 1st Block, Bangalore, I think the coming of online retail is not going to affect the standalone family businesses (that the BJP seeks to protect) as much as it is going to affect the chain stores. The former are agile and able to adapt to customer needs. It is the latter that are sluggish and seek protection.