Ajay Ohri

Slum Dogs Come

Young slum dogs chipping away,

writing code,plugging away.

Take the place under shiny sun someday,

Slum puppies wont go away.

�

You let them in,

They are hungry for more, they stay,

Nobody ever gave them a break on the way,

Grew up fast,slum childhood wasn’t a child’s play.

�

Still here they are firing away,

Full steam ahead, and

Damn no Torpedo’s to dissuade.

Before you could pause, object

Cut them short saying Boy hey.

�

Slum dog walks away,

In his teeth , the shiny bone of the day.

Blood on his fur ,its there�

Long enough to stay.

�

The dog beens much worse,

�Much tougher days.

His brain the only weapon ,

he chooses to play.

�

Brain red hot, it keeps firing away.

That dog wont roll down, play dead, no way.

Been through much pain already this way,

Now numb, The Slum Dogs come here to stay.

Give yourself a Tax Rebate:Google Docs and other stuff you already knew

If I remember correctly, the last time that the US government sent mail in checks to many people, the tax rebate was as low as 300$. You can save yourself much more that , by doing the following-

1) Switch to Ubuntu Linux at http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition

2) Use only Google Docs from http://docs.google.com (keep data securely online) and Open Office (which comes with Ubuntu above or at http://download.openoffice.org/)

3) Use a trusted anti virus solution from AVG (http://free.avg.com/ ) Hesitant , well it happens to be the most downloaded software on CNET’s Download.com

4) Insist on these freeware with your IT department and at your store even if your new laptop or PC comes bundled with other software . Those costs are embedded within your hardware costs.

5) Start using more Amazon EC2 if you are a large data user at office.

6) Use R for analytics work instead of the hugely expensive analytical closed source programs. Here is the easy to learn GUI http://www.rattle.togaware.com . See book on that from the right sidebar or at www.rforsasandspssusers.com .

Chances are you just saved yourself more than 1000$ per head by doing this.If you used option 5 and 6, the savings could be even more substantial running into tens of thousands of dollars.

If you have to CHOOSE between saving costs , maybe saving your job or even your subordinates job, OR making Bill Gates richer so he can give away YOUR money away to charity, what would you choose ? The time is RIGHT NOW.

The declining relevance of LinkedIn

I can still remember two years ago when a friend and erstwhile client from the United States sent me a link to www.LinkedIn.com. While today social media is a rage, back in early 2006 ,LinkedIn re-defined social networking from chatting with teenagers to actual value delivered to customers. Over a period of time both my network and LinkedIn grew- my network is now 6200 members , Decision Stats on LinkedIn has 570 + members and LinkedIn has 30 million people and a reported 1 billion dollar valuation.

Yet Life on LinkedIn has been slowly losing interest to the point where it is now just a directory service of contacts.

Some reasons for the declining relevance of LinkedIn are –

1) Average User Interface Updating- While www.Facebook.com successfully transformed itself into a new look for 70 million users, the UI at LI does leave some things to be desired. Some glitches include a slower than promised rollout of third party applications, and bugs aplenty in the way you update your status, how to remove connections and the new cluttered home page.

2) Thrust on Groups rather than content (Questions and Answers)– Q and A at LI were a great interactive feature as people answered and posted interesting questions. This has been reduced in focus, by the group discussion features which are a half way effort from the discussions free for all and making a newsletter happen for the group. Many successful LI groups made the transition to being full communities in their own right, mostly using www.ning.com .LI was also unable to capture the whole value chain of engaged communities by not having a newsletter function in the groups, and by group owners not being able to customize stuff.

3) Top Down User Limits– Limits on groups being at most 50, invites being at most 3000, meant that slowly LI was punishing active users more than controlling spam. The Open Networkers movement (people who network openly with everyone) was neither predicted nor monetized well by LI.

4) Inability to monetize recruiters fully (they exist and flourish thanks to LI’s inability to fully channelize them into a paying media), not able to cut down on spam (which exists in much bigger volumes now due to bigger user base now), and refusal to create connection specific privacy (as in Face book which allows you to keep levels of privacy display for your connections) are other reasons for the decline.

LI has been a pioneer not only in professional networking but also in using non ad pricing strategies in keeping a steady cash flow. Some new features like LinkedIn Polls are promising , and hopefully the next generation of Third Party applications would make the site interesting again.

So there is hope it will get its act together again. However in a very competitive online ad market, time and speed of reaction are critical. LI does have the first mover advantage, but it can lose relevance just like the Lycos and the Yahoo did if it changes slower than users want it. With the current recession, it is an opportunity for communities like LI to tap into the recruiting market and also focus on owning, creating , if not enabling ,relevant content for reading and sharing by users.

Blog Boy wins…

Dear List – I just became blogger on the week on http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/

That’s because of the R article, the interview with Dr Graham and other India specific things that I write about.Even though I did lose the alumni President elections by some miles at www.iiml.org.

You can read the complete article at Social Media here at-

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/67268

How do I feel ? Well like my creation , Blog Boy below says it best………

Fudging Data: The How, The Why and Catching it

An often encountered problem in data management as well as reporting is data inaccuracy. I was tempted to write about this while poring through reams of data that specifically I had been told to investigate for veracity.

Why data is fudged–

Some of data problems are due to bad data gathering systems, some of it are due to wrong specifications, and some of it is often plain bad or simplistic assumptions.

Data fudging on the other hand is clearly inventing data to fit the curve or trend, and is deliberate and thus harder to catch.

It can also be included to give confusing rather than inaccurate data just to avoid greater scrutiny.

Sometimes it may be termed as over-fitting but over-fitting is generally due to statistical and programmatic reasons rather than human reasons.

Note fudging data or talking about is not really political correct in the data world , yet it exists all all levels from students preparing survey samples to budgetary requests.

I am outlining some ways in how to recognize data fudging – and to catch a fudge, you sometime have to think like one.

How data is often fudged-

Factors-This starts be recognizing all factors that can positively or negatively impact the final numbers that are being presented.Note the list can be expanded to many more factors than needed just to divert attention from main causal factors.
Sensitivity-This gives the range of answers gotten by tweaking individual factors within a certain range say +- 10 % and noting the final figures.Assumptions can be both conservative or aggressive in terms of recognizing the weightage of causal factors in order to suit the final numbers.
Causal Equation-Recognizing the interplay between various factors due to correlation as well to the final numbers due to causing variance changes.The causal equation can then be tweaked including playing with weightage, powers of polynomial expression, as well correlation between many factors.

How data fudging is often caught-

Sampling- Using a random sample or holdout sample, and thus seeking if final answer converges to that known to happen. The validation sample technique is powerful to recognize data modeling inaccuracies.
Checking assumptions- For reasons of risk management, always consider conservative or worst case scenarios first and then build up your analysis. Similarly for checking an analysis , check for over optimism or the period or history on which the assumption growth factors/sensitivities are assumed.
Missing Value and Central Value Movements- If a portion of data is missing, check the mean as well as median for both the reported as well overall data. You can try and resample by taking a random sample from the data and check these values repeatedly to see if they hold firm.
Early Warning Indicators-Ask the question (loudly)- if this analysis was totally wrong , what indicator would give us the first indication of it being wrong. This could be then incorporated as part of metric tracking early warning system

Note the above are simplistic expressions of numbers I have seen being presented wrongly, or being fudged. They are based on my experiences so feel free to add in your share of data anecdotes.

Using these simple techniques could have helped many people in the financial as well as other decision making including budgetary as well as even in other strategic areas.

As the saying goes- In God we Trust, Everybody else has to bring data ( which we will have to check before trusting it)

A Base SAS to Java Compiler

Republished by demand: Here is a nice SAS to Java compiler. It basically cuts away at the problem of executing legacy SAS code, SAS training and focuses on executing the tasks in Java thus making them much faster.

It’s available at http://dullesopen.com/

And its free for personal use.And academic use.

I quote from the website "

Carolina Benefits

Converting Base SAS® to Java with Carolina provides two main benefits to enterprises:

Savings on license fees. Carolina costs about 70% less than SAS.
Performance gains. Carolina-converted code runs significantly faster than the native SAS program.

Additional Benefits

Greater flexibility. Java is an industry-standard environment that runs on all platforms. It is much easier to support than the legacy SAS environment it replaces.
Better integration. Carolina, as a Java application, supports web services through true J2EE integration.
Flawless automated conversion. Eliminate time-consuming, error-prone manual conversion.
Simpler contracts. Carolina is licensed in a simple, straightforward fashion.
Reduced training costs. Carolina-converted programs can be understood by analysts without training in SAS, and SAS-trained analysts don’t need to learn a new programming language."

Zazzle.com and Cafepress.com

Here is a nice new age Web 2.0 website to create customized website merchandising. You get a share of the royalty and can create products like caps, T shirts and Mugs. I used to have an account some years back at www.cafepress.com and this website www.zazzle.com seems to do the job, perhaps taking it up a notch higher.

www.Cafepress.com www.zazzle.com