This one is dedicated to all those lucky people who have more head than hair! I have composed a few one-line appreciations for you all
Jaan jaane se darr nahi lagta sahib, baal jaane se lagta hai
Baal vivah is what you need, baal a bit more importantly then vivah to satisfy your lust
Baal vivah is what you need, marry some hair, its a "saat janmo ka bandhan"
When you kneel down to propose, she has to put on her shades
You wish you could produce more baal than bachhe
The only transplant available is not a viable option
Use fevicol instead of hair-oil, mazboot jod hai, tootega nahi
Batra's is your favourite medication
You wonder why isn't the lack of hair at some place below
There's a new term on the block, "hair-fetish"
There's a mirror traveling with you, but one which you yourself cannot use
The place is not fertile, and hence a turnoff
Experience is the comb which god has given you
You wonder why people complain about grey hair
What's the difference between a king a bald man: a king has a heir apparent, a bald man has no hair apparent
People can see whats on your mind, coz there's nothing to cover that
A shower can get you brain-washed
There's no story which is hair-raising for you
You are proud of your "aerodynamic shape"
You wonder what a hairline fracture is
But you can still get Steffi Graf
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
IIM F
The HRD Ministry today approved the setting up of a new IIM, IIM-F, short for IIM - Fake. This will be first IIM which will not be in India, and the ministry has chosen a central European city of Fucking, as the location of the new institute.
The admission process to this institute will also be different. The first hurdle, which the aspirants have to pass is clear the FAT, abbreviation for Faltu Admission Test. The format of the test is yet to be finalized, but sources said that the test will aim to judge mainly one quality of the aspirants, FATe, thus justifying the name given to the test. Inside sources said that, the test might consist tossing coins for 2 hours and 15 minutes, with top 1% of the aspirants who turn up the most number of heads will be given a chance to move to the next stage of selection process, the interviews.
The interviewers are expected to check whether the candidate can think "into the box" or not. Inside sources also said the interviewers do not want alumni of the top engineering institutes, like TII-B, TII-D, etc to get into this IIM, because they don't think in this way.
The course structure is yet to be finalized but an outline has been made. There will be periodic assignments given in each of the courses. Credits will be given only if the student copies blatantly from a source. Negative credits will be given if the assignment is found to be original. When a company called Xerox came to know about this course structure, it immediately agreed to come to the institute for placements, promising that it will take atleast 100% of the students. Thus, It's poised to become the first institute with 100% placement guarantee even before its inception.
The ministry has decided to reserve 50% of the seats in this prestigious institute for the residents of Fucking. Although this move might improve the economy of the city, its believed that rampant corruption among the administrators will make it very easy to prove that the candidate belongs to the city.
The admission process to this institute will also be different. The first hurdle, which the aspirants have to pass is clear the FAT, abbreviation for Faltu Admission Test. The format of the test is yet to be finalized, but sources said that the test will aim to judge mainly one quality of the aspirants, FATe, thus justifying the name given to the test. Inside sources said that, the test might consist tossing coins for 2 hours and 15 minutes, with top 1% of the aspirants who turn up the most number of heads will be given a chance to move to the next stage of selection process, the interviews.
The interviewers are expected to check whether the candidate can think "into the box" or not. Inside sources also said the interviewers do not want alumni of the top engineering institutes, like TII-B, TII-D, etc to get into this IIM, because they don't think in this way.
The course structure is yet to be finalized but an outline has been made. There will be periodic assignments given in each of the courses. Credits will be given only if the student copies blatantly from a source. Negative credits will be given if the assignment is found to be original. When a company called Xerox came to know about this course structure, it immediately agreed to come to the institute for placements, promising that it will take atleast 100% of the students. Thus, It's poised to become the first institute with 100% placement guarantee even before its inception.
The ministry has decided to reserve 50% of the seats in this prestigious institute for the residents of Fucking. Although this move might improve the economy of the city, its believed that rampant corruption among the administrators will make it very easy to prove that the candidate belongs to the city.
Friday, July 8, 2011
The Realty
Living in Mumbai for four years and seeing the real estate prices there made me think, why the hell are they so high! Conventional wisdom says, Realty prices are determined by three factors: first, location, second, location, and third, location. While this is definitely true for a city, I wanted to know what made Mumbai as a whole so expensive, compared to say, Bangalore.
Hence, I did a small study of my own to find the various factors on which it depends, and how strongly these factors explain the actual Realty prices observed in the city.
The first and most important factor has to be demand for land. Supply is fixed, and hence only demand determines the prices. But how do you measure demand? The population of the city is definitely a measure of demand, but we do have a better measure. Consider one sq. km of land, fixed supply. The demand for that piece will depend on the number of people living on that one sq. km. Hence, the density of population should to be a better estimate of demand. Lets first do a regression of Real Estate prices versus Density of population.
This table shows the data I used to do this single variable regression. Rate represents the average rental value per month of a 2BHK, approx 1200 sq. ft. apartment. The value is an average of the first 20 results I got on 99acres.com, when I searched for properties in that city. Density represents the Density of population measured in persons per sq. km in the city, as taken from census data and wikipedia. I get the following from the regression:
R-squared = 0.3893
hmm...Density does explain about 40% of the variation in realty prices, but this doesn't sound convincing. Intuitively, there must be other factors which also play a part. Lets just list some of those "other" factors.
If the city's infrastructure, especially public transportation facilities are very good, people can always live in the outskirts and travel comfortably to their place of interest. Good infrastructure facilities should relax the pressure on realty prices. Factors like good climate, job opportunities will put an upward pressure on prices. There will be other factors also, like safety of living etc. There is no objective way to quantify these factors. So, I will just put another independent variable called "other" and do a multiple regression analysis. This variable can have values from 1 to 5. 5 representing the maximum pressure on prices. This is a highly subjective variable and disagreements may exist.
Thus, Mumbai with its pathetic transportation and great job opportunities should be rated pretty high on this scale. Delhi, with good transportation and great job opportunities should be in above average range. Patna, a fairly unsafe place with few job opportunities should score a minimum in this factor.
Thus, I get the following table:
'Rate' is the dependent variable, which is being explained by two independent variables: 'Density' and 'other'. I get the following stats from regressing this data:
R-squared = 0.8780
R-squared adjusted = 0.8509
This definitely looks better. These two factors combined have done a good job by explaining more than 85% of the variation in realty prices.
If, on the other hand, I regress the rates with only one factor 'other', R-squared is 0.711, which means that other factors single-handedly explain about 70% of the variation in prices. The result is simple to interpret, that is, non-quantifiable 'other' factors play a more important role in explaining the variation than density of population. Nevertheless, Density is important because it is the only variable which is deterministic in this analysis.
In conclusion, there is no complete objective way to estimate realty prices. Subjective factors play a major part and they have to be taken into account to undertake such a study. I feel this framework is a decent starting point to identify cities with undervalued properties. I am also pretty confident that this framework can be applied in an international context, provided we account for purchasing power parity variations, but I leave this international perspective to an institutional study.
Disclaimer: This is a completely independent research without plagiarism (except that some data was taken from websites, but I've acknowledged them). Any resemblance to a prior research is coincidental. I claim no copyright on this study. For the full analysis, I can be contacted on my gmail address.
Hence, I did a small study of my own to find the various factors on which it depends, and how strongly these factors explain the actual Realty prices observed in the city.
The first and most important factor has to be demand for land. Supply is fixed, and hence only demand determines the prices. But how do you measure demand? The population of the city is definitely a measure of demand, but we do have a better measure. Consider one sq. km of land, fixed supply. The demand for that piece will depend on the number of people living on that one sq. km. Hence, the density of population should to be a better estimate of demand. Lets first do a regression of Real Estate prices versus Density of population.
| City Delhi | Rate 15000 | Density 12000 |
| Mumbai | 25000 | 22000 |
| Kolkata | 17000 | 24000 |
| Chennai | 13000 | 22000 |
| Bangalore | 12000 | 8000 |
| Hyderabad | 11000 | 18000 |
| Ahmedabad | 12000 | 22000 |
| Pune | 12000 | 7000 |
| Surat | 8000 | 15000 |
| Jaipur | 7000 | 19000 |
| Lucknow | 4000 | 3000 |
| Patna | 3000 | 1800 |
This table shows the data I used to do this single variable regression. Rate represents the average rental value per month of a 2BHK, approx 1200 sq. ft. apartment. The value is an average of the first 20 results I got on 99acres.com, when I searched for properties in that city. Density represents the Density of population measured in persons per sq. km in the city, as taken from census data and wikipedia. I get the following from the regression:
R-squared = 0.3893
hmm...Density does explain about 40% of the variation in realty prices, but this doesn't sound convincing. Intuitively, there must be other factors which also play a part. Lets just list some of those "other" factors.
If the city's infrastructure, especially public transportation facilities are very good, people can always live in the outskirts and travel comfortably to their place of interest. Good infrastructure facilities should relax the pressure on realty prices. Factors like good climate, job opportunities will put an upward pressure on prices. There will be other factors also, like safety of living etc. There is no objective way to quantify these factors. So, I will just put another independent variable called "other" and do a multiple regression analysis. This variable can have values from 1 to 5. 5 representing the maximum pressure on prices. This is a highly subjective variable and disagreements may exist.
Thus, Mumbai with its pathetic transportation and great job opportunities should be rated pretty high on this scale. Delhi, with good transportation and great job opportunities should be in above average range. Patna, a fairly unsafe place with few job opportunities should score a minimum in this factor.
Thus, I get the following table:
| City | Rate | Density | Other |
| Delhi | 15000 | 12000 | 4 |
| Mumbai | 25000 | 22000 | 5 |
| Kolkata | 17000 | 24000 | 3 |
| Chennai | 13000 | 22000 | 3 |
| Bangalore | 12000 | 8000 | 4 |
| Hyderabad | 11000 | 18000 | 3 |
| Ahmedabad | 12000 | 22000 | 2 |
| Pune | 12000 | 7000 | 4 |
| Surat | 8000 | 15000 | 2 |
| Jaipur | 7000 | 19000 | 2 |
| Lucknow | 4000 | 3000 | 1 |
| Patna | 3000 | 1800 | 1 |
'Rate' is the dependent variable, which is being explained by two independent variables: 'Density' and 'other'. I get the following stats from regressing this data:
R-squared = 0.8780
R-squared adjusted = 0.8509
This definitely looks better. These two factors combined have done a good job by explaining more than 85% of the variation in realty prices.
If, on the other hand, I regress the rates with only one factor 'other', R-squared is 0.711, which means that other factors single-handedly explain about 70% of the variation in prices. The result is simple to interpret, that is, non-quantifiable 'other' factors play a more important role in explaining the variation than density of population. Nevertheless, Density is important because it is the only variable which is deterministic in this analysis.
In conclusion, there is no complete objective way to estimate realty prices. Subjective factors play a major part and they have to be taken into account to undertake such a study. I feel this framework is a decent starting point to identify cities with undervalued properties. I am also pretty confident that this framework can be applied in an international context, provided we account for purchasing power parity variations, but I leave this international perspective to an institutional study.
Disclaimer: This is a completely independent research without plagiarism (except that some data was taken from websites, but I've acknowledged them). Any resemblance to a prior research is coincidental. I claim no copyright on this study. For the full analysis, I can be contacted on my gmail address.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Start up, Shut down
Hey, you know, I am an IITian. I am the most brainy person in the world. Any company, any job is just not good enough for me. No manager can manage me. I am the captain of my life. I ought to be doing my own "things". Why should someone else reap the benefits of my work? CRAP, all of this is crap.
I am now two years into my job life at the moment, and its high time I said something on some of my beliefs in this respect.
No offense to some of my friends who are intending to open their own company in near future or have already done so, but if one or more of your reasons for doing this were listed above, I am afraid, your start-up will just make-up the numbers and belong to the 'crowd' of start-ups, which you know, fail.
But then, you could well have a great idea and the ability to think and plan about all the numerous nuances, and the hard work to back it all. Chances are your start-up could well be "the chosen one". Go ahead! Change the world for good!
The problem is, people are obsessed with just the 'idea' part. Ability and hard work are the ingredients often missed by people to make a successful dish out of it. You really think Apple is successful because of its products and breakthrough technologies? Wrong. Its the marketing champion called Steve Jobs who has made you believe in that bullshit. "Introducing iPhone 5, as much as 5 nanometers thinner than iPhone 4, so that it can slickly fit into your pocket".
Then, there are some people who want their own start-up, but are constrained. Lack of risk appetite, lack of knowledge and work experience, and so on. No urgency, time will come. And then, there are some who don't want a start-up at all. A hearty congratulations to them, you are doing your dream job. Your life is perfect! I envy you.
Hey wait, I know the recipe of a successful start-up, so why don't I make one from it? That's simple, I don't have the ingredients with me at the moment, but I promise, I will have them sometime soon.
I am now two years into my job life at the moment, and its high time I said something on some of my beliefs in this respect.
No offense to some of my friends who are intending to open their own company in near future or have already done so, but if one or more of your reasons for doing this were listed above, I am afraid, your start-up will just make-up the numbers and belong to the 'crowd' of start-ups, which you know, fail.
But then, you could well have a great idea and the ability to think and plan about all the numerous nuances, and the hard work to back it all. Chances are your start-up could well be "the chosen one". Go ahead! Change the world for good!
The problem is, people are obsessed with just the 'idea' part. Ability and hard work are the ingredients often missed by people to make a successful dish out of it. You really think Apple is successful because of its products and breakthrough technologies? Wrong. Its the marketing champion called Steve Jobs who has made you believe in that bullshit. "Introducing iPhone 5, as much as 5 nanometers thinner than iPhone 4, so that it can slickly fit into your pocket".
Then, there are some people who want their own start-up, but are constrained. Lack of risk appetite, lack of knowledge and work experience, and so on. No urgency, time will come. And then, there are some who don't want a start-up at all. A hearty congratulations to them, you are doing your dream job. Your life is perfect! I envy you.
Hey wait, I know the recipe of a successful start-up, so why don't I make one from it? That's simple, I don't have the ingredients with me at the moment, but I promise, I will have them sometime soon.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Playing bridge online v/s live
I am in that mood today where I just want to kill the internet, Bridge Base Online - to be precise, because it has killed live bridge. You know, I want to give it a death sentence for killing something else. I know so many players who were good at bridge, but then they started playing online, and it killed their game. This holds particularly for my regular online bridge partner
Lets just consider two situations, first, you are in a live-in with your girl and second, your girl lives a thousand miles away and you regularly video chat with her. Needless to say, the former is like playing live, where you can actually touch the cards. The latter is the equivalent of playing online. To say the obvious, everyone will like to be in the first situation. If you are stuck in the second situation for long, that is if you play online without playing live, you'll end up breaking up with bridge. Such (long-distance) relationships don't last.
Besides, I've noticed that I actually play better when I'm playing live. The best of your skills come out when you are playing live. An example from last week, I used the opponents carding agreement to make an overtrick which wasn't available otherwise. This sound a bit naive to some of the experts around, but this was the first time I used opps' carding to achieve something. I am too casual when I am playing online, and I never did that, ever, when playing online
I was in the same situation some time back. I hadn't played live bridge for two years, and had really started losing interest in it. Thankfully, the love wasn't lost completely and I've started playing at club level on weekends. I'll also take every chance to play zonals/nationals, whatever they call it, whenever possible.
My love is back into my life!
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Why you shouldn't play online poker
Let me just begin by saying that I am totally in favour of playing poker with friends. It’s a wonderful way of passing time in nightouts after you are out of college. Frankly, I don't see a better way of passing time than that, unless, of course, if you have a chick with you.
1) The fees which online casinos charge: "Rake" as it is called, is at around 5%. So, if you are an average player, you will make a loss of 5% in the long run. Do you really want that? Compare it with the stock market, which many insane people believe is like legalized gambling. If you an average player there, that is just invest in an ETF, you make a return of 13-15% (this is a 100-year average, which, by any definition, is a long run), adjusted for fees, for every unit invested. So, unless you are a very good professional player, which you aren't because you are reading this, you shouldn't play online!Details aside, I may also add that I have made enough profit in poker, friendly or online. That is, I am not writing this because I've lost while playing. The reasons I have against online poker are purely strategic and analytical.
So lets get to the point!
Hand Read!2) You can't read faces: This takes a lot of fun out of the picture. Imagine yourself bluffing by seeing the player's face only, without caring a damn about your cards!
Also, lack of face-reading takes away a major area of improvement. A typical poker pro has an immaculate sense of face reading, which he takes advantage of. You must have seen how Negreanu sometimes tells the two personal cards of an opponent perfectly.
3) Addiction: That's simple, you will be addicted to it, because you have it with you all the time. I can suggest one way to get rid of this addiction, change your Internet service provider to bsnl, and you will not (be able to) play again.
4) Complicated Legalities: The Terms & Conditions are way too complicated, especially the ones relating to getting Bonuses. And the worst part, the player has no power or authority to turn to in the event of a dispute.
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