Speed dating

Everyone in the LGO program does a 6 month internship for a partner company. To decide who goes where, there is internship - fest, which is much like speed dating. Each partner conducts an interview with each interested student and then matching happens. The big difference is that no one goes home empty handed.

While I have never done speed dating myself, one of the funniest emails I ever received was from my cousin the day after she had speed dated. She had to take notes so that she would remember the guys and then try to match with someone at the end. An excerpt from her notes is as follows:

" Kamtrivi - Never got to ask him a question

Robert - Weirdo!

Audi - finance dude
David - doesn't care for women preachers or tongue speaking churches
Bill - army, talks out of side of mouth
John - speaks 4 languages, size of 12 year old"*

After getting this email, I have to admit to a little twinge of disappointment that I (having already found my soulmate) would never be able to experience Speed Dating. My cousin started the email by saying that speed dating was a bust, so she perhaps would not agree. But to me it seems that experiences like that are what make life interesting.

I was teaching English in China when I received this email. It made such an impression, that I actually did an entire class activity around speed dating. This was by far my student's favorite activity.

On an only marginally related note, my cousin recently went on a blind date with someone who it turned out she had already met at a speed dating event**. On a creepy scale of 1 to 10, How creepy was it that the guy knew they had already met but didn't tell her because he thought she wouldn't still want to go out (and proceeded to tell her that during the date)?

*The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

**Her notes were "Bob - boring, talks about investments, shrimpy"

Multi-tasking

I have roughly 3 weeks left of the summer semester and it is getting rough. I am pretty much working nonstop and still not getting it all done.

Tyler however has it all under control. Upon returning from a bike ride today, he turned a soccer game on TV, pulled baseball stats up on the computer, and had the baseball game actually playing on his iPod. He clearly has mastered the art of multi-tasking.

Evidence below.

a prolonged absence

I apologize for the lack of posts this past month. I've been in India. I happened to go there during the hot season so whenever any one mentions India in the future I'm sure that I'll respond somewhat in the following manner: "Ahh, yes, India ... tis a hot place ..."

Anyways, I'm attempting to retrospectively blog the trip - you can read about it here.

Ms. Duncan has filled in admirably for me in my absence and let's hope that she continues with the blogging in the future.

The grass really is greener!

Tyeliah recently finished her first class - probability - or rather the first half of the probability and statistics class (there are 2 different teachers for the two halves, so I call it two classes). To celebrate their last lecture with the probability teacher - Arnie - they all wore orange - Arnie's favorite color. They also all created new name placards.

I just went to grad school. I didn't have name tags. Hmmm...

Anyways, instead of being 'Tye' - Ms. Duncan's business-y name - she went by 'Tray Table Catcher.' I have been informed that Ms. Duncan would have been much more creative had she known that I would be blogging about the experience. Apparently The Tray Tables were a baseball team in a homework problem. And I thought the Banana Slugs was the worst mascot name.

Tyeliah thoroughly enjoyed her time in probability class - the teacher was quite entertaining or so I'm told. I've always been a fan of probability myself, being somewhat mathematically inclined. I also had an excellent probability teacher in my undergraduate days, a swiss man who had an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus who would come in every class and ask "Does anyone have any questions today" and when inevitably no one would say anything (college is supposed to be a place of flourishing debate but I think anyone can attest to the fact that there are an inordinate amount of uncomfortable silences) he would say "Good - my dog ate all the answers so I wouldn't be much help" or some other ever varying excuse about how he had misplaced the answers. I enjoyed it.

Anyways, a curious probability quandary involving expected values was recently explained by the probability and statistics TA on the way back from a recent plant trek (more on that later). An expected value can be explained as follows - say you get $60 if you roll a 6 and $30 if you roll a 5 and $0 if you roll anything else - you have a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6 and a 1/6 chance of rolling a 5 so the expected value of one roll of the dice is (1/6*60+1/6*30+2/3*0) $15. If you think about it in casino terms, the casino would want to set up a game where you had to bet greater than $15 to roll the dice so they would be assured (in the long run) of making money. I'm sure there's a better way of explaining expected values, but you get the idea.

The TA created a problem as follows. Say you are presented with 2 envelopes - one of the envelopes has twice as much cash as the other - although you don't know the value of the cash in either envelope. You choose envelope A and open it up to find $100. So there's a 50% chance that you chose the higher valued envelope (meaning that envelope B has $50) and there's a 50% chance that you chose the lower valued envelope (meaning that envelope B has $200). Then you're given the option of keeping envelope A or switching to envelope B. What do you do?

The choice rests upon the expected value of envelope B - if the expected value is greater than $100, you should switch. So what's the expected value? 1/2*50+1/2*200=$125. Therefore, you should always switch to the other envelope.

Thus the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and if given the option, you should always jump over the fence.*

Personally, I love the liberal arts and sciences for many reasons but mostly because I like the idea that any triviality can be analyzed and analyzed and analyzed again and connected to deeper truths about our inner psyches or broad all encompassing truths about the nature of our societies. So, in my love of overanalyis, I decided to research the question of whether the grass really is greener on the other side.

Lo and behold (a phrase worthy of its own analysis) I came across this, an academic paper purporting to show that the grass may not actually be greener on the other side but that we are psychologically disposed to think so. It also explains why I always seem to choose the slowest lane in the grocery store or make all the wrong choices as I attempt to navigate a traffic jam.

Ahhh, internet. You never cease to amaze me.

*There are of course problems with this probability paradox - something to do with the lack of an actual upper limit value on the amount of the cash in the envelope which if it were to exist (as it empirically must) would take away from the higher expected value of always switching. But fun nonetheless, wouldn't you agree.**

**Ms. Duncan believes I just made up this problem with the probability paradox and that it is not actually true ... she may be correct ... it's been known to happen in the past

Free time today - sort of

I'm home at 1 in the afternoon. This has not happened in a while.

I have class every day till 12:30, then the afternoons are filled with tutorials, speakers, committee meetings, team projects, and soon plant tours. This means that I usually get home around 5:30, and that's when I do my homework. All this adds up to very little free time. When you add in LGO social events, it is safe to say that this program is all consuming.

Today though, good karma has converged on the near mid-point in the semester to clear my afternoon schedule.

So instead of attempting to cram all of my homework into the hours between 6 and 10, I will be spending my afternoon and evening studying for my mid-term tomorrow, finishing my assignment for lean, and starting my leadership paper. I may even go on a bike ride. The weather is actually beautiful.

Ou est le soleil?

Can't a girl get a little sun? My mother just called to tell me that the sun has only shined 3 times in Boston since mid-May. This was not a strictly necessary phone call as I live in Boston, but it did help me decide what to blog about, so thanks mom. I know I should not be complaining - Boston is awesome for numerous reasons, not least of which is that MIT is in Boston. But it is July for cripes sake! Everyone told me that I was lucky to be coming in June since Boston is beautiful in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter. Now everyone is telling me that this is a highly unusual summer and that it is usually quite beautiful. I hope it is a highly unusual winter because I certainly do not think I should have to put up with the awful winter weather if I am not going to get the great summer. Also, since this will likely be my only summer here (I will be on internship next year) there is really precious time left for the sun to redeem herself.

One point of defense for the sun, one of the few sunny days was actually July 4th. Many of my fellow LGO'ers and I went to the MIT sailing pavilion to watch the fireworks that are shot off from the middle of the Charles river. It did get a little chilly when it got dark but the sky was clear, perfect for fireworks. This first picture is from the pavilion of the Boston skyline across the river. The pictures of the fireworks really don't do them justice, I took them with my iPhone as my camera is in India at the moment.

As for the lack of sun, my mom suggested I take a trip to Florida. Oh to be in Florida. Unfortunately that won't be happening for a while, my first exam of the semester is tomorrow. Who needs the sun when you have probability?

Summer classes

This is the first post that will be straight from the horse's mouth. Tyler is bumming around India at the moment so I will be writing a few posts myself. As I do not have his flare for the fancy talk, this will be just the facts.

I thought I would say a few words about each of the summer classes that Tyler listed in the last post.

Operations management class has turned out to be my favorite. We have been studying process flows and capacity* and just today started an introduction to inventory management. While one typically would think of manufacturing, we are looking at service processes as well. The classes have been mostly case discussions which concerned me at first but have turned out to be enjoyable. (It is still a little weird to have someone putting a check mark beside my name every time I speak in class.) What I like most is that there are lots of opportunities for my classmates to discuss examples from their previous work experience. Since I did not come from manufacturing I am fascinated with some of the cool things they have worked on. We recently played the Beer Game - a supply chain game where you work on a team to produce and deliver beer each week as a way to look at inventory. While it was very fun, I was disappointed that there was no actual beer.

Probability and statistics is taught by two professors. The first professor is covering probability and next week is his last week. It hasn't been too challenging yet but I am told that the stats portion is more difficult. It will be my first exam though, so perhaps I shouldn't be too confident. There is no way the second prof is going to be as funny as the first.

High velocity organizations is the a class I am struggling with some. I expected a class on the tools of lean six sigma and this is not it. Instead the class is more about how to think about lean in a broader sense and how successful organizations have implemented lean. There haven't been any graded assignments yet so it all seems unclear.

Systems optimization started a little later than the rest of the classes so this is just the second week. Basically there are lots of word problems that have to be solved in Excel. Think what you will, but I love it.

Finally, there's leadership. The professor is terrific and the classes are interesting. There are case studies interspersed with video. If you are thinking that one can not teach leadership, we actually discussed that dilemma first. This class is a little intimidating because I don't get my grade for two years. I have to write a leadership plan this summer that details how I plan to develop and use my leadership skills during my graduate work and then at the end of the program (in two years!) I will be graded on how well I executed the plan. My first thought was no wonder the LGO program is so awesome. I mean if every student has to create a plan and implement something during their time here, of course the program is going to benefit. It's bloody brilliant.

So that is the summer core. And if Boston every figures out that this is summer and the sun comes out, all will be well in the world.

Classwork has picked up very quickly but this is a 4-day week because of Independence day so my long weekend begins tomorrow! Happy 4th!

*No post would be complete without a footnote. The law that describes a stable system says that the inventory in a system is equal to the flow rate times the time it spends in the system. This is known as Little's law for John Little who proved it in the 60's. John Little is a long-time professor at MIT Sloan. I heart MIT.