hindsight – Pertinent Observations

Numbers and management

I learnt Opeations Research thrice. The first was when I had just finished school and was about to go to IIT. My father had just started on a part-time MBA, and his method of making sure he had learnt something properly was to try and teach it to me. And so, using some old textbook he had bought some twenty years earlier, he taught me how to solve the transportation problem. I had already learnt to solve 2-variable linear programming problems in school (so yes, I learnt OR 4 times then). And my father taught my how to solve 3-variable problems using the Simplex table.

I got quite good at it, but by not using it for the subsequent two years I forgot. And then I happened to take Operations Research as a minor at IIT. And so in my fifth semester I learnt the basics again. I was taught by the highly rated Prof. G Srinivasan. He lived up to his rating. Again, he taught us simplex, transportation and assignment problems, among other things. He showed us how to build and operate the simplex table. It was fun, and surprisingly (in hindsight) never once did I consider it to be laborious.

This time I didn’t forget. OR being my minor meant that I had OR-related courses in the following three semesters, and I liked it enough to even considering applying for a PhD in OR. Then I got cold feet and decided to do an MBA instead, and ended up at IIMB. And there I learnt OR for the fourth time.

The professor who taught us wasn’t particularly reputed, and she lived up to her not-so-particular-reputation. But there was a difference here. When we got to the LP part of the course (it was part of “Quantitative Methods 2”, which included regression and OR), I thought I would easily ace it, given my knowledge of simplex. Initially I was stunned to know that we wouldn’t be taught the simplex. “What do they teach in an OR course if they don’t teach Simplex”, I thought. Soon I would know why. Computer!

We were all asked to install this software called Lindo on our PCs, which would solve any linear programming problem you would throw at it, in multiple dimensions. We also discovered that Excel had the Solver plugin. With programs like these, what use of knowing the Simplex? Simplex was probably useful back in the day when readymade algorithms were not available. Also, IIT being a technical school might have seen value in teaching us the algorithm (though we always solved procedurally. I never remember writing down pseudocode for simplex). The business school would have none of it.

It didn’t matter how the problem was actually solved, as long as we knew how to use the solver. What was more important was the art of transforming a real-life problem into one that could be solved using Solver/Lindo. In terms of formulation, the problems we got in our assignments and exams were tough – back in IIT when we solved manually such problems were out of bounds since Simplex would take too long on those.

I remember taking a few more quant electives at IIM. They were all the same – some theory would be taught where we knew something about the workings of some of the algorithms, but the focus was on applications. How do you formulate a business problem in a way in which you can use the particular technique? How do you decide what technique you use for what problem? These were some of the questions I learnt to answer through the course of my studies at IIM.

I once interviewed with a (now large) marketing analytics firm in Bangalore. They expected me to know how to measure “feelings” and other BS so I politely declined after one round. From what I understood, they had two kinds of people. First they had experienced marketers who would do the “business end” of the problem. Then they had stats/math grads who actually solved the problem. I think that is problematic. But as I have observed in a few other places, that is the norm.

You have tech guys doing absolutely tech stuff and reporting to business guys who know very little of the tech. Because of the business guy’s disinterest in tech, he is unlikely to get his hands dirty with the data. And is likely to take what the tech guy gives him at face value. As for the tech guy doing the data work, he is unlikely to really understand the business problem that he is solving, and so he invariably ends up solving a “tech problem”, which may or may not have business implications.

There are times when people ask me if I “know big data”. When I reply in the negative, they wonder (sometimes aloud) how I can call myself a data scientist. Then there are times when people ask me about a particular statistical technique. Again, it is extremely likely I answer in the negative, and extremely likely they wonder how I call myself a data scientist.

My answer is that if I deem a problem to be solvable by a particular technique, I can then simply read up on the technique! As long as you have the basics right, you don’t need to mug up all available techniques.

Currently I’m working (for a client) on a problem that requires me to cluster data (yes, I know that much stats to know that now the next step is to cluster). So this morning I decided to read up on some clustering algorithms. I’m amazed at the techniques that are out there. I hadn’t even heard of most of them. Then I read up on each of them and considered how well they would fit my data. After reading up, and taking another look at the data, I made what I think is an informed choice. And selected a technique which I think was appropriate. And I had no clue of the existence of the technique two hours before.

Given that I solve business problems using data, I make sure I use techniques that are appropriate to solve the business problem. I know of people who don’t even look at the data at hand and start implementing complex statistical techniques on them. In my last job (at a large investment bank), I know of one guy who suggested five methods (supposedly popular statistical techniques – I had never heard of them; he had a PhD in statistics) to attack a particular problem, without having even seen the data! As far as he was concerned he was solving a technical problem.

Now that this post is turning out to be an advertisement for my consulting services, let me go all the way. Yes, I call myself a “management consultant and data scientist”. I’m both a business guy and a data guy. I don’t know complicated statistical techniques, but don’t see the need to know either – since I usually have the internet at hand while working. I solve business problems using data. The data is only an intermediary step. The problem definition is business-like. As is the solution. Data is only a means.

And for this, I have to thank the not-so-highly-reputed professor who taught me Operations Research for the fourth time – who taught me that it is not necessary to know Simplex (Excel can do it), as long as you can formulate the problem properly.

Wine buying

Today, for the first time ever, I went out to buy wine, and in hindsight (I’m writing it having finished half of half the bottle) I think I did a pretty good job.

I had gone to this “Not just wine and cheese” store in Jayanagar hoping to pick up some real good wine to go with our cooking experiments for the evening (we’re making pizza and pasta). Having had really bad experiences with Indian wines (Nine Hills, Grover’s, Sula), I gave them a wide berth and moved over to the international section. The selection wasn’t particularly vast, and interestingly as soon as I moved over to the international section, one of the shopkeepers came over to assist me.

He first showed me a 2009 wine from France, when i asked him to show something older. For a slightly higher price, he pulled out a 2006 wine from France. The pricing seemed suspicious to me. A six year old wine from France, one of the more sought after wine-producing countries, for just Rs. 1600 (inclusive of 110% tax, so the duty free dollar price comes to around $15)? May not be very good wine, I reasoned, and now I decided to let go of all details on production date, etc. and simply asked the shopkeeper to recommend to me a good bottle.

Maybe it was the fact that I had quickly moved over to the international section, or that I was talking about year of bottling, but the shopkeeper assumed I was a rather serious buyer, and enthusiastically recommended to me a few bottles. Now, picking wines is tougher than picking whiskeys (where it’s easy to have favourite brands. Mine, if you would ask, is Talisker). Each country has several estates, the year of bottling, weather in the country in various years and several other factors go into determining how good a bottle is. Also, there’s inverse pricing, where you perceive more expensive wines to be better. So one has to look upon raw economics skills in order to judge wine bottles and pick something that is likely to be good.

What particularly interested me was a bottle of 2010 wine from Chile. Now, at Rs. 1300, it seemed rather highly priced for its vintage (given that France 2006 went for 1600). And then, I realized that Chile is a rather unfashionable wine producer, since most people tend to prefer European wines, and that being in the temperate weather zone, it is capable of producing good wines.

The shopkeeper mentioned that the particular bottle had been procured after a customer had specifically asked for it, and that it was made of superior quality grapes. Now, given that it was a wine of recent vintage and from an unfashionable producer, that it cost almost as much as a much older wine from a much older vintage told me something. That it was likely to be good.

It’s about two hours since I got home, and the bottle is half empty. The wine has been absolutely fabulous, and I hope this is the beginning of a great wine-buying career.

Staggered surprises

When you have a number of things to surprise someone with, you can either flood them with that, or present it to them in a staggered manner. And based on recent experience with both forms, on both ends of the divide, I get the feeling that staggered surprises are superior and more effective than flooded surprises.

A year and half back, for my then girlfriend’s (now wife) birthday, I had got a bunch of things. There were clothes, food, a collage and even this laptop I’m writing this post on. And as soon as I entered the girlfriend’s house that day, I started producing these one by one. Before she could react to any of the gifts, I had produced another, and there was a flood. In hindsight, I thought the value of some of the things I’d got her were lost because I didn’t give her enough time to appreciate them while she was still surprised.

She played it differently at my birthday yesterday. Again, there was a bunch of things she had lined up. So at midnight yesterday, she says happy birthday and hands me a kurta. I try it out, and as soon as I’ve finished appreciating it (took a while) she makes me take it off, and gives me another. This way, over the course of the next ten minutes, she gives me five kurtas. And then a leather bag. And a box of tea. And some fancy paper to scribble on.

Giving gifts in a trickle, I think, works because of the expectations it sets. When Pinky produced the first Kurta, the natural thought in my head was, “oh she’s got me a kurta for my birthday”. I had expected one kurta. And when she slowly produced the next, I was surprised. You don’t generally expect someone to get you five kurtas, so each one she produced was met with a fair bit of surprise. The trickle had set my expectations low, and so the degree of surprise was high.

Pinky wasn’t done yet. She had solicited “happy birthday videos” from a number of my friends, from various stages of my life. Due to a personal tragedy (her grandfather passed away on Saturday) she hadn’t had time to put them together in a montage, but that helped her stagger-surprise me again. She first played videos from relatives, and after I had thought that was all to it, she played videos from friends. One by one. Not pushing expectations too high, and continually surprising me.

It was to play out similarly at the surprise party she had organized for me last night (after all the gifts and video messages, the last thing I had expected was a party). I had been told we’d be going out for dinner, when two of my oldest friends (I’ve known them for 25 years now) arrived. “Maybe she’s called my oldest friends to join us for dinner”, I thought. After a while they were followed by a friend from college who lives in the US now. I was truly shocked. He and his wife had dropped in while on their way to a wedding, I was told. I had no idea a party was on.

And then some quizzing friends appeared. And then some most recent colleagues (remember I don’t have any “current” colleagues). And Pinky, who had disappeared a while back, materialized with a cake. Soon enormous quantities of food appeared. I was already drinking by then and it was surreal. The best birthday ever, for sure. No, really! I don’t know if I would have been as happy had the surprises not been staggered.

PS: Ashwin and Vyshnavi responded to Pinky’s call for “happy birthday videos” with this one. It’s total kickass.

Slow deaths and sudden deaths

My parents both died slow deaths. My father spent the last three months of his life in hospital, of which the last month was in intensive care on ventilator support. He had been rendered immobile, and when the ventilator tube and food pipe went in, there was absolutely no way in which he could communicate to us during the brief times we were allowed to meet him.

My mother’s was a different story, but on a shorter time scale. She spent her last month in hospital, with the last ten days in intensive care and on ventilator, again what I think was fairly painful existence for her, living in a fairly isolated and airconditioned room, not being able to communicate with anyone, with all sorts of tubes and measuring devices stuck all over the body.

In hindsight, I regret my decision to allow them to be put on ventilator. I feel guilty for having extended their lives in a way which was both painful to them and where there was little meaning, for they lived cut off, and unable to communicate (and in both cases, had I thought rationally, I would’ve known that there was little chance the time on ventilator would allow them to recover). The only upside to this was that it gave me time to prepare. That it gave me time to prepare for their impending passing,

People who attended either of my parents’ funerals might have been surprised, a bit shocked even, to see that I was quite composed and in control of things. I wouldn’t be wrong if a number of them thought I was a heartless emotionless wretch. The reason I behaved thus was because it was only an incremental change as far as my mental preparedness was concerned. Till the day prior to both my parents’ deaths, I knew that the chances that they would recover and get back home was minimal. Delta. Epsilon. The death, normally a “discrete event” had only pushed this chance to zero, not a big change in probability.

I was thinking about all this two nights back when my grandfather-in-law passed away, once again after a prolonged illness (he refused to be admitted to hospital or be put on life support so in a way he was spared of time on ventilator), but his condition had deteriorated steadily enough for us to know that he would be gone soon. Several family members reacted quite badly, but several others were quite brave and acted bravely. The slow death was the reason for this, I thought.

There are too many factors that affect death, and no one can choose either the time or mode or pace of dying, but I have been thinking if slow deaths are better than sudden deaths or vice versa. The upside of a sudden death is that there is little suffering on the part of the dyer, but the discrete nature of the change (probability that the person would be no more the next day would jump suddenly from close to zero to one) would imply a huge shock for family members and friends, which they would take considerable time and effort to come out of.

A slow death, on the other hand, is extremely painful for the dyer, while it gives time to the family members to come to terms with the reality. Here, too, of course there is usually one big discrete step involved (like that Monday night when in the matter of less than an hour, my mother went from happily chatting with me to gasping for breath so uncontrollably that they had to immediately wheel her to intensive care and a ventilator; or that Thursday morning when my father suddenly realized he had lost all the power in his legs and couldn’t stand on his own), so it is more like a time-shifting of pain (for relatives/friends) rather than the pain being amortized over a number of days.

Once again, there are no clear answers to this question about which mode of death is better, but ever since I saw my father spend his last three months in hospital I’ve believed that sudden deaths are superior. I’ve found myself reacting to other people’s sudden deaths saying “good for them they went without suffering”. Again, no one really has control about how or when they’ll die. It’s only a question about what to hope for in life.

Indoctrination methods

I’m suddenly reminded of some “competitions” I took part in back when I was in school, which in hindsight seem like indoctrination methods. The basic structure of the competition is this. An organization announces an inter-school competition – either a quiz or an essay writing contest, or even a debate. These weren’t “normal” quiz/debate/essay competitions, though. All of these had a pre-requisite, and that was reading a certain book that was prescribed and marketed by these organizations. I don’t know if one had to pay for these books – if I remember right, they were given away “free” once you paid the nominal fee to register for these competitions.

It was an easy way to indoctrinate over-enthusiastic kids, or kids of over-enthusiastic parents, who wanted to win every competition in town, and gather as many “bullet points” as one could (though this was far before anyone really thought of careers and the like). All you had to do was to announce a competition, with the promise of a certificate and nominal prize, and thousands of kids would sign up, and do anything in their capacity to win the contest.

I remember two such competitions well. One was organized by the Ramana Maharshi Ashram, where we had to mug a book about him, and then had to write an essay. I remember the topics well. It was something of the kind of “my thoughts after reading about the life of Bhagavan (sic) Ramana”. I don’t remember reading the book too well (I’d forgotten to collect it, I now remember) and wrote some random stuff. I didn’t come close to winning that.

The other was by ISKCON, and this included both a quiz and an essay, if I remember right. Again we had to mug a standard-issue ISKCON book. I remember less of this than I did of the Ramana Maharshi thing (I don’t know why), and again I didn’t do too well, and that hurt my pride as that was around the time when I used to be pretty good at quizzing (and still didn’t know to distinguish between a good and bad quiz, and not worry much about my performance in the latter).

Organizations like ISKCON or the Ramana Maharshi Ashram are incentivized to get more “followers”, and one way of gaining followers is to feed impressionable young minds of material that shows the organization in positive light. And then make them undertake activities that hammer in that message. In that sense, events such as these that tap in on students competitive spirits are a big win for these organization. It’s an easy way to reach a large unsuspecting audience, and even a “small” conversion rate is enough to drive “membership” signficantly.

On a similar note, I remember Gaurav Sabnis writing about debates that the VHP used to organize in Pune in a similar sort of effort. The only difference there was that there you didn’t need to mug any boooks.

I’ve done it yet again

I quit my job earlier this week. I did so on Wednesday, the fourteenth. In hindsight, I should have waited another day and quit on the fifteenth, to coincide with the anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers. So for the fourth time in five years of career, I’ve quit a job without knowing where I’ll go next. The plan for the first month is to just chill and detox, and get back my sanity. Once that’s achieved, I’ll start thinking about where my next paycheque is going to come from (my employer promptly put me on Garden Leave, thus effectively giving me a month of “free salary”).

You know what I miss the most about student life? The annual vacation! That once a year, you are entitled to spend two months or more doing absolutely nothing. I remember that friends chose to do academic projects during that time. Others got internships in companies. A few others chose to travel then. I used to do none of the above. I’d just sit at home in Bangalore and fatten myself (to compensate for the weight loss during the semester), and that ensured I started each semester in fairly high spirits (no I didn’t indulge in those spirits back then). The only time I did something “productive” during vacations was when it was an academic requirement to do a project.

I seriously miss having that annual two-month detox period. Yes, I know that my last employer gave me over twenty days of paid leave per year, but it wasn’t the same. You knew that it was a rationed resource, and you’d try to use it effectively. You’d go on vacation and immediately get on to a flight. You would land in Bangalore and head back to office within the next twenty four hours. You would sometimes need a break, take a day off from work, and then feel supremely guilty. It was on one such day sometime in the recent past that I realized that I miss vacations.

There exists a reasonable chance that I might choose to be self-employed (if things work out the way I intend, that is) but otherwise I need to find myself a job that gives me substantial vacation days a year, which I can take without any guilt. I realize that is absolutely necessary for me to keep myself charged up, and that if I had access to vacations the way I did during school/college I wouldn’t have taken a career break so many times after I started working.

My other objectives for this vacation are to travel (but it’s a bit tough given that the wife works and is subject to the twenty-days-of-paid-leave rules) and more importantly figure out for myself what my tradeoffs in life are. During my last job, I realized that I’d grossly misunderstood between my tradeoff between time and money. The other tradeoff I need to understand is the one between money and perks. And I want to write more.

Copa Format

The ongoing copa america is probably the worst designed sporting event I’ve ever seen, in terms of tournament format. Yes, there have been tournaments that have come close in the past, like the Asia Cup 08, which had a funny format so as to ensure at least two India-Pakistan matches (but that ensured that the chances of an India-Pakistan FINAL were really low). Then there was Euro 2008, where teams qualifying for the knockout from the same group ended up in the same half of the draw. And then, in hindsight, there was the Cricket World Cup 2007, when two upsets threw out two of the favourites before the “real tournament” had begun.

But in the face of the current Copa America, all of those can be described as being extremely well-designed tournaments. The Copa format is so bad that I seriously doubt that this post is going to be exhaustive in listing out all its flaws. Since there are so many of them, and I don’t want to keep saying “moreover”, “next” or “furthermore”, I’ll do it in bullet points. The points are in random order

You have 12 countries in the first round which you want to reduce to 8 for the second round. What do you do? Four groups of three with top two from each qualifying right? Instead, they have 3 groups of 4, with the two best third placed teams also qualifying. So you spend 18 matches (2/3rd of the tournament) throwing out one-third of the teams! Ok but I understand (as Atul Mathew points out on twitter) this is the standard format of Copa so I guess I’ll let it be
The organizers seem to have clearly drawn from the experience of 2007 CWC, when India and Pakistan went out in the first round. And given how the first two rounds of matches played out, it wouldn’t have been hard to imagine one or both of Argentina and Brazil going out, which would have killed the competition. I guess that’s the reason the Copa adopts this tamasha of third placed teams and stuff.
The last matches in each group are not simultaneously played, and the “seeded teams” in each group (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil) got to play the last games, and thus figure out what exactly they needed to do (fix it even, maybe?) so that they got a favourable draw in the quarters. Actually, as I’ll explain in a subsequent tweet, it was more like “favourable opponent” rather than “favourable draw”. Check out Jonathan Wilson’s piece on watching Brazil-Ecuador with a bunch of Chile fans
Now you have in the second round Brazil taking on Paraguay, whom they’ve faced once before in the group stages. Again, daft format that allows a team to play the third placed team in its own group in the second round itself. I remember FIFA 1994 handling third placed teams well, to make sure they didn’t meet teams they’d played before in the second round
Take a look at the quarter-finals fixtures, and do a sensitivity analysis of what would have happened if either Brazil had done slightly worse or Argentina had done better. You will notice that as long as Argentina and Brazil finished their respective groups as either number 1 or number 2, they would end up in different halves of the tournament! Oh, the lengths the organizers have gone to ensure they maximize the chances of getting a Brazil-Argentina final. Another off-shoot is again teams from the same group having to meet in the semis. For example, if Venezuela beat Chile this weekend, then either Brazil or Paraguay could get to the final of the tournament by not ever facing a team that started anywhere outside of group B!!

As I mentioned this list is unlikely to be exhaustive. And I hope for the sake of giving the organizers a kick in the butt, Paraguay and Uruguay will do the needful and throw out Brazil and Argentina respectively. They’re fully capable of doing that, based on tournament form.

Wimbledon 92

Currently reading last Saturday’s Mint Lounge Wimbledon special. Was reading this article on the McEnroe-Borg rivalry, and I was taken back to the only McEnroe match that I clearly remember seeing. This was in Wimbledon 1992, which was more like a typical French Open. Upsets left right and centre. Unknown players making it to the latter rounds. Familiar players nowhere to be seen..

Back in the late 80s, when as a small boy, Wimbledon was probably the only Grand Slam I’d watch. Maybe the French Open, too, but I don’t really remember any French Open finals before 1990 (was that when the Ecuadorian Andres Gomez beat Andre Agassi, or was that in 1991? I guess that was 91, since Michael Chang won in 90). And in the 80s, Wimbledon meant just four names to me. Men’s finals had to be Boris Becker versus Stefan Edberg, and the ladies finals between Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova.

Coming back to 92, there was no Becker, no Edberg. Even Michael Stich, who had come from nowhere to win the previous title wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was no Navratilova or Graf in the ladies’ tournament, which I think was won by Conchita Martinez (don’t remember the game, but remember seeing a Sportstar pic of her at the Champions’ Ball). As I told you, the 92 tournament was like a French Open (for pre-Nadalian readers, the French Open is supposed to be a tournament where heavyweights all lose in the early rounds, and each year there’s a new unexpected person who wins. It’s not supposed to be the monopoly it’s turned into of late).

In hindsight, looking back at the 1992 tournament, just looking at the semi-final line-up, I realize what a legendary tournament that was! Some names were then unknown, and were to become legendary later. One other was known, and you had reason to feel sorry for him at that point in time. And there was the lovable veteran.

Goran Ivanisevic beat Pete Sampras
Andre Agassi beat John McEnroe

No one had heard of the first two (Sampras had won the US Open in 1990, but we didn’t watch him, did we? No one watched either the Australian or US Opens those days. The timings were inconvenient), but they would show us their greatness in the coming decade. We all remembered Agassi as the guy who had lost two consecutive French Open finals (to Gomez and then to Jim Courier, having been 2 sets to nil up in the latter). And I don’t need to say much about McEnroe, except that perhaps that was the last I saw of him, save the odd appearance in Davis Cup.

Agassi beat Ivanisevic in the finals. 6-7 6-4 6-4 1-6 6-4. I still remember the scorecard. Thanks to the “checksum fact” that the Deccan Herald had published the following day. That both players had won exactly 25 games each.

Think, and tell me, if you can think of any other major tennis tournament with this kind of a semi-final line-up, spawning eras. Don’t throw up tournaments where the top four seeds were in the semis (that’s so increasingly common nowadays I’m losing interest in tennis).

And reading this issue of Mint Lounge made me long for Sportstar again, for the times before it had become a tabloid. When I would read through pretty much every word of it, and crack sports quizzes.

PS: This post has been written entirely out of what I remember things to have been like, and I haven’t bothered checking the facts. So pliss excuse me, and correct me, if I’m wrong.

Dropping out

Less than a semester into my undergrad (Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras) I wanted to drop out, and start work. I didn’t want to be an “engineer”.

I didn’t know why I’d to spend all my Thursday and Friday afternoons filing away at some piece of iron in the “fitting workshop”. I didn’t have the patience to draw three views of a random object in “engineering drawing”.

And I had the reputation of being one of the studdest programmers in my school. Apart from winning competitions here and there and doing well in acads, I had enormous respect from peers for my programming skills. Given that it was a “high-performance school” (which subjected its own 10th standard students to a test before admitting them to 11th) I guess this peer respect does carry some weight.

So, being good at math, and having the reputation of being a stud programmer, I didn’t know what I was doing studying “engineering”. I wanted to be a programmer, and I wanted to drop out and take up a job. My JEE rank counted almost as much as an IIT degree, I thought. I didn’t have the balls, and I continued.

In hindsight, I’m happy I didn’t drop out. By the end of my second year, I knew for sure that I DIDN’T want to be a programmer. While the theoretical aspects of Computer Science excited me (algo analysis and stuff), I had absolutely no patience for “systems”, or “computer engineering”. I was perhaps alone in my class in my love for Microsoft products (easy to use).

I realized then that I liked only the algorithmic aspect of programming, where one solves a (mostly math) problem and codes it up in a simple program. Huge complicated systems-intensive programming, making GUIs etc. didn’t inspire me at all.

Looking back, all that “major” (i.e. Computer Science and Engineering) stuff that I’ve learnt and internalized was learnt in my first two years of engineering. Of course several concepts that are part of CS&E are taught in the last two years, but I ended up not liking any of that.

Looking back, I do find it positive that I did all those “general engineering” courses. I do find it really positive that we had to do 12 compulsory credits in Humanities and Social Sciences, for that allowed me to discover what I was really interested in, and indirectly led me to doing my MBA.

I have only one regret. That I wasn’t able to switch streams sooner than I could. That IIT, being a one-dimensional technology oriented university, didn’t allow me to transfer credits to a course that I would’ve liked better, simply because it offered undergrad courses only in engineering.

There was a humanities department, where I discovered what I was interested in, but unfortunately it was a “minor” department. It’s been partly rectified now, with the setting up of integrated MA courses, in Economics, etc. (if that course existed back when I was studying, there’s a good chance I’d’ve transferred to it from CS&E). But it’s not enough.

Kids at 17 have no clue what they want to do. What we need are flexible full-scale universities, which allow you to switch from any branch to any other branch after two years of reasonably generalized study (the earlier branch can then contribute to “minor” credits). We need to stop putting our colleges in silos such as “engineering”, “arts and science”, etc. Only then would our universities be truly world class, even from an undergraduate point of view.

And looking back, I’m really happy I didn’t drop out.