Ajay Ohri

The Air Force

From an Article in Time on US Air Force demands for extra funds.
1) Days earlier, Carlson said that today’s U.S. Air Force “simply cannot fight and win against the fleet of airplanes that have been developed and are flying in India, China, and so forth,” a claim questioned by many experts. But his view has been reinforced by the companies employing 25,000 workers in 44 states building the F-22 — the prime contractor is aerospace giant Lockheed Martin — and their allies in Congress.

Now what is flying in India is a fleet of Mig 21 s that are two decades old, and cant dare take on Pakistan, leave the United States. That’s right, they cant blame the Russians for the money so blame India.

2) And if you thought your wife spent a lot….

More than $1 billion is being sought for 11 passenger planes, seven of them Gulfstream Vs favored by Apple’s Steve Jobs and Sir Elton John (no mention of any Required Force justification here).

Then there’s the line item seeking 100,600 handguns (there are 330,000 people in the Air Force) featuring “improved ergonomic design and higher caliber effectiveness” at $1,157 a pop. The service also wants 210,000 M-4 carbines at $1,747 a clip.

Why Wives Nag

Wives nag –

1) Because they have no one else to nag to.

2) they are trying to improve you for your own good. or change you for their own good.

3)they dont understand half the things you do…watch sports, video games,cars, etc….they are not nagging just asking

4) women try to restrict the self destructive tendencies of men.

maybe thats why the dinosaurs went extinct. their wives stopped nagging them and they ended up fighting and killing each other in the spare time.

5) its actually a sign of affection and they are just expressing themselves. They nag because men are not so good listeners. Huh…

6) behind every great man was a women …who nagged him till he became great. does not apply to men named Clinton.

7) they are socially conditioned to nag.

I mean wouldn’t it be boring if all you could do was watch sports, or hang out with the guys in peace with no one to disturb you. I mean wasn’t that the reason we get married because we get bored out of doing nothing but watching sports and hanging out with the guys.

Do not show this to your wife . If you know me, do not forward it to my wife.

10 Steps to create a Model

Models are used to predict specific events in specific time frames upon stimuli –

1) How many people will buy credit cards if we mail them

2)How many people will buy credit cards if we call them

3) How many people are more likely to buy a credit card if we target only 50 % of total population

Modeling consists of the following –

1) Select a pre-event . Eg Previous credit card campaign

2) Divide data into building, validation and third sample.Sampling should be random.

3) Remove outliers with a capping (maximum,minimum) and invalid /missing values with central tendencies (mean,median)

4) Choose method of modeling based on data-

Regression

Segmentation

Time Series

5) Choose software of modeling dependent on resource availability (budget,people,softwares) _ you can do it in sas, spss ,excel with different amounts of skill sets ,data handling and complexity.

6) For regression modeling (most commonly used) ,do iterative tests in the building sample to remove multi collinearity (like variance inflation factor ) ,and statistical measures to test goodness of model (concordance, p value of individual variables, gain or lift across deciles).

7) Score the validation sample with the same equation variables, check for lift ,and signs and parameter estimates , they should not change radically

8) Cross validate on third sample

9) Additionally go for transformation of variables (x,1/x,x^2,logx,e^x) to get incremental lift

10) Go for binning of variables….do the variables behave in same manner across deciles as their sign in regression equation.

p-s. search wikipedia for any statistical definition that you are not familiar with

pps – This will be followed by ways to present a model, which is a different ball game all together

Top 5 ( addictive ) Fun Facebook games

1) Pirates

Pirate ship sails, battles monsters,other pirates ,gains gold, gambles etc. Quit cool

2) Triumph

Conquer the world strategy game. Buy armies and battle others.

3) Dope Wars Online

Be a cartel king buy and sell drugs and fight and group.

4) Human Pets

Buy and sell human pets

5) Outlaws

Similar to pirates, except here it is a cowboy who rides.

The views here are personal like always. 😉

From Yahoo to Facebook via Twitter

try this only if –

You like music

You like technology

Have time on hand and want to have fun

I listen to internet radio using Yahoo Messenger’s Launchcast Plugin. Very good music, not too many ads (for free users like me) and good connectivity. I then enable the option of my status message in Yahoo Messenger to be the same as the song I am listening to.

I also use another Yahoo Messenger Plugin called Twitter Sync from WackyB.co.nz

It updates my Twitter account with the song I am listening to.

And on Facebook, I use a facebook application called Twitter 🙂 . It downloads my Twitter status and changes my Facebook status.

So there, changing my facebook status from my yahoo messenger . And listening to free music too !!

Mash that !!!

Recession in 2008

2 cents /rupees on the economic slow-uh-down in the US (economy is resilient ,tax cuts ,blah blah!)

1) Recessions -especially recessions that are anticipated and planned for always look worst at the beginning.

2) While some can cut spending the usual way for Govts is supply side (fed rate cuts) for more money , and demand side(Keynes) stimulus spending

3) Political costs is always a key policy decider in economic slow downs. We may see more bi partisan ship as parties work together for welfare projects in an election year

4) Costs of War are likely to come down in 2008, Health Care will be reformed (pre or post) election, and Microsoft-yahoo consolidation deals are what makes slowdown exciting for tech people especially in Web 2.0 analytics

5) Credit costs will come down , and foreclosures on mortgages cannot increase beyond a political threshold. Expect more respect to risk analytics from now on in financial services .Job layoffs could lead to more rather than less consultants.

6) The last slowdown was due to tech meltdown and an economic disruptive event/tragedy. This one is cyclical and will be less severe.

7) Expect some slowdown in outsourcing (I am India based 😦 ) and China based exports due to a) dollar depreciation and
inflation catching up in Asia c) 2008 Political sensitivities

8) Windows Vista may continue to slow your computer down. Google phone software may be new innovator on your mobile. Expect more mashable technologies (from SAS ??) . Stand alone platforms will have to mash with others ,and that too online and faster.Consultants may have to learn more than one platform .eg. PMML ,R ???

9) We will have more interesting 2008 than 2007. That’s the economist in me speaking. As Alan Greenspan wrote we will live in the age of turbulence.

10) Expect more environmental analytics related work opening up in some time.

Comparing Base SAS and SPSS

Comparing Base SAS and SPSS is an age old question between analytics professionals as both of these are one of the longest running statistical softwares in the world.

While Base SAS is on version 9 + and has greatly improved it’s visual appeal to counter SPSS’s click and get results interface, SPSS has moved beyond version 15.0 + and started adding modules like SAS has done.

Here I will be comparing specific SAS and SPSS components like SAS ETS with SPSS Trends, and SAS Base /Stat with SPSS Base.

Base SAS is almost 1.75 times as expensive in upfront cost for a single installation than SPSS.

SAS ETS is better than SPSS Trends for time series analysis for bad data, but SPSS Trends can easily make huge numbers of time series analysis than SAS ETS.

SAS is more tougher to learn than the point and click interface of SPSS.

SPSS Documentation is much better and give better clarity on algorithms used for statistical procedures.

Base SAS is much more powerful for crunching huge numbers of data (like sorting or splicing data),

for data that is smaller than say 100 mb, the difference is not much between SAS and SPSS.

SPSS is a perpetual license, while SAS has year on year license. This eventually makes it 2-3 times more expensive.

Modeling is easier done in SPSS but SAS can provide more control thanks to command line interface/advanced editor coding.The SAS Enterprise is not as good a visual interface as the SPSS.

For a startup analytics body, the best installation for both SAS and SPSS is network licenses preferably over a Linux network. You should ideally have a mix of both SAS and SPSS to optimize both costs and analytical flexibility.

Other Comparisons with Base SAS (a SAS Institute Copyrighted Product ) can be found at http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/

or by searching packages at http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/search.html