Re-Oriented

When Ms. Duncan began the LGO program in June, she went through a rigorous orientation program - something called the Universe Within that lasted for a week and ended with a trip to some island in the bay where blindfolds were dispensed and much reflecting on blindfolded activities took place... Or so Ms. Duncan tells me.

When yours truly first went to grad school oh so long ago (2 years) my orientation was about 3 hours and ended with drinking on the roof of the building - but then again I was a lowly liberal arts and sciences students so there was less to orient me toward.

MIT stands firm behind a one week-long orientation per degree policy and as Ms. Duncan is getting two degrees (for those of you who have forgotten - an MBA and an SM in civil and environmental engineering) she was in line for 2 orientations - one in June and one when the Sloanies arrived in late august so that she could get to know her fellow Pacific Oceanites - see previous post (as Ms. Duncan did not deign to inform you, dear reader, it is left to me to deliver the news of the Sloan schools failings at geography - there are 6 Sloan Oceans - Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Baltic, Caribbean and Mediterranean - somewhere the MIT administration's 4th grade teachers are pulling their hair out).

There was much revelry and blindfolding ... and building of rafts ... and they rode on a boat through the bay and I got to go ...

Having endured that most horrendous of orientations (peace corps training) I adopt the motto of the less that can be said of orientations, the better... so I'll only mention one more thing that was common to both the June and August orientings.

The Beer Game!

Both less and more exciting than it sounds - in a way it corresponds to that historic Homer quote (the simpson, not the greek) - (the) Beer (game) - the solution to and cause of all of life's (read supply chain's) problems. Ms. Duncan didn't actually play the beer game during the august orientation opting instead with some of her LGO colleagues to go and drink actual beer instead of playing at producing it.

But there is much to learn from the game so I'll try to explain it. However, the best way to figure it out is to actually go and play it yourself - which you can do right here.

For a brief overview, the beer game is played with "teams" of 4 (I use the quotes as there is little actual communication between team members) - a retailer, a wholesaler, a distributor and a factory - together comprising a supply chain for cases of beer - hence the Beer Game. Teams are ranked based on combined final amount of money they lost (the less the better, obviously).

Like many academic activities, the Beer Game - much to Ms. Duncan's delight - was created at MIT as a supply chain management education device and is now played throughout the MBA world and the corporate management education world (Ms. Duncan is also a huge fan of the MIT created Little's Law - which has something to with stats or operations engineering - it may be little, but it's a law - so she tells me).

Pretty much all the players do is fill an order (the retailer fills the customer's order, the wholesaler fills the retailer's order ...) and place an order (the factory decides what to produce, the distributor orders from the factory ...). Everybody starts with 12 beers of inventory. You lose money by having inventory and by failing to fill orders. One other thing - the "customer" is a pack of notecards with an order amount written on them - the retailer flips them over before each turn to find out the customer demand.

Simple yes? Go and play and then come back - spoilers are ahead.

In theory the game is fairly simple, but there are delays between the time an order makes it to the person one level up the supply chain and there are delays between the time an order is filled and the time an order arrives - so if the retailer makes an order in week 1, the wholesaler gets the order in week 3 and the goods get delivered to the retailer in week 5 ... or something like that - you get the idea.

Thus much havoc is created through a bull whip effect that leads to huge backlogs in orders and then huge inventory levels. The different players on the team often get into fights ("Why didn't you make more beer!!" so the distributor yelled at Ms. Duncan the factory operator) because of the madness and most people think that the customers are ordering wildly different amounts from turn to turn.

They're not though. They start ordering 4 for a few weeks and then they switch to 8 and they stay at 8 the rest of the time. This switch combined with the delays and the desire to lower inventory leads directly to the bull whip effect.

Pretty much everyone does horrible. People who have played before and thus know that the orders are just going to be 8 for pretty much the entire time - they often do worse.

There is much to be learned from the beer game - I shall ponder it deeply and come down from my academic mountain later and draw silly conclusions.

Pacific Cranes

So I have a new team.

It is sad not to be in class with a lot of the other LGO students, but I am getting to know my new classmates the Sloanies. The entire class of 2011 is divided into 6 oceans, I am in the Pacific which means that I take all of my MBA core classes with the people of the Pacific. Within each ocean, we are divided into birds, so my core team are the Pacific Cranes. We are a diverse group in many respects. We have...

Jen - former director of admissions for the University of Hawaii business school

Carlo - an Italian who is still somehow running his own business while attending classes

Lynn - from Thailand, she is a wiz at accounting, she is sponsored by the cement company she was working for before coming to Sloan

Jeff - from California most recently, he took class in the MIT Engineering school before coming here

John - went to the Naval Academy, and was working in DC before Sloan

Ramiro - an Argentinean who loves to discuss politics and is somehow related to Che Guevara

Like I said, a diverse group - except that Jeff, John and I were all working for defense companies before coming to school.

This being business school, Carlo made us a logo...

le semestre d'automne commence

Ms. Duncan recently began the fall semester. She's taking 8 classes ... you read correctly, 8 classes. For comparison, during my recent master's program, I took 3-4 classes a semester, so 8 is pretty ridiculous. I can't really tell you how many credits she's taking as MIT is of the opinion that ordinary university procedures are beneath them so instead of the usual credit system (based on the hours of classes one takes per a week) they have a unit system. Ms. Duncan is taking 68 units - which is supposed to mean that she spends 68 hours per week attending or doing homework/projects for these classes.

As Ms. Duncan is getting both an MBA and an SM (another ridiculous MITism) in Civil and Environmental Engineering she has to take more than just the business school core (people in business school at MIT are referred to as Sloanies - for some reason whenever I hear this term I think of Newsies and I picture them as 10 year olds in shorts and bowties and suspenders running around downtown handing out newspapers and singing - I haven't actually seen Newsies but this is what comes to mind).

The business school core is as follows (each are 9 units):

Organizational Processes

Communication

Economics

Financial Accounting

Data, Models and Decisions (DMD)

Ms. Duncan doesn't actually take DMD as her summer stats and systems optimization courses covered similar material. In addition to these 5, Sloanies also have to take either Finance or Marketing (I think my granddad once told that I should definitely take one of these two classes - I didn't listen - perhaps that's why I'm still looking for a job). Most LGO students (no catchy nickname as of yet but some people are pushing for LeGOs) are also taking one of these two this semester (they are required to take at least one sometime during the program) but Ms. Duncan opted instead for more engineering now.

Her engineering courses:

Logistic Systems (12 units)

Design for Sustainability (6 units)

Logistics and Supply Chain Management (12 units)

LeGos also have to take a Pro-Seminar (2 units) "class" which is really just a lecture series with fancy pants business people although they are trying to get the Houston Rockets GM to come speak (also known as "Dork Elvis" according to ESPN's the Sports Guy) so that could be cool.

So that's what she's up against - formidable (say it with a french accent - 4-me-dahb).

Ms. Duncan has promised to post more on the specifics of each class later although she'll likely be less than completely honest (she hates one of the classes but she won't let me say which ... harumph).

In other school related news, tyeliah has finally received all of her grades from the summer semester - she did well. She joked that she has a better GPA than yours truly (a gross insult in this household) which is only true because of MIT ridiculousness. They use a 5.0 scale here. Bah.

In less school related news Ms. Duncan and yours truly moved into MIT student housing - a small one bedroom apartment midway up a very ugly building that I'm sure looked very cool in the 1970s - aka the decade of horrible industrial architecture that looked nice for 5 minutes. We just missed out on having an awesome view of the Charles River but the apartment is fine despite the tiny oven. We bought carpeting from a couple that was moving out - we had to cut it to fit our bedroom and living room - a note to future mover-inners - carpet is a nasty unmanageable beast and used carpet carries with it untold amounts of dust of previous owners that all comes out when you move it in. Ugh.

It was worth it.

A Week and a Half Break

Ms Duncan has just finished her summer break ... it was disconcertingly short - 1 1/2 weeks. We were quite busy - planning a certain ceremony and visiting friends with whom we bonded over various bouts of intestinal diseases during our Peace Corps service.

First we went to Vermont, stayed at a friend's family cabin in the woods, went swimming everyday in an amazingly beautiful lake with a perfect island right in the middle, toured the Cabot cheese factory, went to the Ben and Jerry's factory (no tour as they weren't actually making anything that day - and no free sample as far as I can tell), played cards and other games, cooked out (yours truly built a glorious cooking fire), played tennis, and generally had a fabulous time reconnecting with the people who were too lame to move to Boston when we left DC. There was much rejoicing.

As a couple friends were departing, we learned that they would be returning to the Northeast next weekend to see family in Maine - they invited us along so we ended up picking them up at the airport and driving through hellacious boston traffic along I-95 (easily the most gridlocked interstate top to bottom in the country) arriving at the family abode after midnight, waking up at 530 to drive another hour and a half north to the river, bundling up in wetsuits as it was 45 degrees outside, rafting down the river for 5 hours (an interlude that was broken up by lunch at the mosquito breeding grounds - seriously the most infested place I have ever seen), getting a busted lip from a bouncing oar (Ms. Duncan) and nearly falling out of the raft during class 5 rapids (yours truly - Ms. Duncan dropped her oar into the river to keep me from falling out), driving back to Bangor to attend a folk music festival, driving out to another cabin on a lake, jumping in said lake at midnight despite 45 degree temperatures, sleeping on tiny beds, jumping in the lake again, and heading back to boston.

When put that way it seems like quite a lot.

Business Ethics

One of the things that always amazes me is that for every movie out there, there's always someone who thinks it's awesome - no matter how horrible the movie was. Take for example, Disaster Movie - on the imdb list of 100 worst movies it's ranked by the user's as the 24th worst movie - the only movie on the list to be ranked by more than 25 thousand people - so it's pretty unanimous - but not entirely. An amazing 6% of people gave it a 10.* Surprisingly, very few of these 10 ratings are jokes - unlike the case with Manos: The Hands of Fate, long regarded as the worst movie ever. With that movie, quite a few 10s are handed because of a thorough enjoyment of the unintentional comedy from a horrid attempt at a serious/scary movie. But Disaster Movie is supposed to be a comedy, thus the unintentional comedy vote is largely removed (unintentional comedy is the realm of horrible dramas - horrible comedies are the worst as no laughs at all can escape) - that is to say, these people really liked the movie.** My favorite positive reviewer talks about how it's one of his favorite movies that he can enjoy with friends or alone. He then goes on to complain about the negative reviewers - "perhaps the users that commented negatively to this movie could make a better movie? hummmmm. doughtful."

What's interesting is contemplating the possibility that there might be some movie or book that you love, that everyone else clearly recognizes as being utter crap. For example, I really like this blog post, but there's a good chance that it's quite horrible. All this is just a long pre-introduction to bring up my own introduction to the blog topic using Adam Sandler's Billy Madison, which I was shocked, shocked I say*, to learn had a splat rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I believe history is largely on my side due to the numerous eminently quotable moments in the movie (a favorite of mine being "You ain't cool unless you pee your pants" to which the old woman responds "If peeing your pants is cool, call me Miles Davis." ... on second thought, maybe I'm wrong).

Billy Madison ends with an academic contest between the heir (Billy) and the scheming corporate hack who wants to take over the company. They have a final set of questions. Billy get's his so so wrong - the judge responds (and I'm writing this off the top of my head so it likely contains errors - indulge me) "at no point in that rambling incoherent answer do you even come close to approximating anything that can be construed as a correct response - everyone in this room is dumber because of you - I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul." You would think it would be over for Billy.

However, his scheming opponent gets a question on business ethics which he of course is entirely unfamiliar with and at the thought of losing to Billy he proceeds to pull out a gun and take someone hostage (I forget who) before he is jumped on by the overweight elementary school principal who wrestles under the name of The Blob!

I imagine some of the people at business school might respond similarly.

Now, disclaimers first. I am truly impressed by everyone I've met in the program. They are all very intelligent and genuinely nice people and I don't think they're going to take anyone hostage nor do I think they'll bamboozle grandma out of her savings so they can buy their kid the latest diamond encrusted tonka truck.

That being said, I still have some qualms about their ethical training.

Ms. Duncan recently finished her first semester in the LGO program and to celebrate they had a BBQ outside on campus followed by some games. People were split up according to the teams they used in throughout the semester (with SOs included). We played the Tie-A-Balloon-To-Your-Ankle-And-Then-Jump-On-Everyone-Elses-Balloon game, a carry an egg on the spoon while blindfolded game, a water balloon toss, a relay race involving three legs, human wheelbarrows (yours truly) and sacks, and a final pie eating contest. No real prizes were awarded and no scores were kept.

Yet rampant cheating took place. Now one way to look at this is that no one was really hurt by the cheating since there was nothing to win so it was all in good fun. Another way to look at is that they cheated when there were no stakes - imagine when millions of dollars are on the line.

*As an aside, I'm guessing that these movies are made for the young idiot male (of which I'm sure there are plenty) but surprisingly men actually give it a lower rating than women and young women give it the highest rating of all. I have two explanations for this - first, women are nicer in their reviewing (as an eg. I give scathing reviews to bad teachers, but Ms. Duncan is much more resistant) - second, young idiot females have much more peer pressure power over young less idiotic females.

**I haven't actually seen the movie - the closest I've come to seeing anything by the craptastic directors who made this movie is Scary Movie where they served as minor writers - I remember the movie largely being horrible and paling in comparison to the great spoof movies like Airplane or Naked Gun or Hot Shots ... for a good critique of these directors see here.

***Just as I cannot say "So it goes" without thinking of Vonnegut, or "forever" without thinking of Sandlot, I cannot say "Shocked" without thinking of Casablanca.

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.

a long and rambling introduction to LGO that seems to go nowhere before somehow suddenly ending

Currently Ms. Duncan is in the third week of school and the second week of classes. Thus, a post on classes is in order but not before we present a general introduction to the program.

In the words of the immortal bob slydell - What would you say ya do here?

Yours truly has been somewhat skeptical of business school in the past partly because of a lack of understanding for what they actually do at business school.*

In regards to this misunderstanding, I present the following dialogue:

Me: Hello Good Sir, off to where are you?***

MBA student: Good Morrow old chap, why I'm off to get an MBA.

Me: An MBA dear sir, at a business school I presume ... what would you say ya do there?

MBA student: Why I suppose I learn about business

Me: Yes, yes, of course, but what do you actually learn

And that's where I get stuck as I don't know how the MBA student responds and as I had a sour opinion of some of my undergraduate friends who got undergraduate business degrees I've always been doubtful that the true answer is anything more than 'buy low, sell high' and 2 years of thinking of other ways to say it.

That skepticism is certainly overly broad and uncalled for - Ms. Duncan is learning some 'rules and tools' of general business here (i don't know exactly what they are yet but I imagine I will over time ... something to do with flow charts i'm sure) - and I do in general respect the case study method (the method generally used for teaching those rules and tools at business schools) something i'll be commenting on later so I will attempt to withold judgement, give benefits of doubt where necessary and to be generally more credulous than sceptic and I advise my skeptical brethren to adopt similar attitudes as we follow our fair friend through her educational journey. Besides which, its not like she went to Harvard business school like our late president (late not as in dead but as in dethroned) - that would just be extraordinarily mockable.

Furthermore Ms. Duncan is not just attending business school but is instead part of the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program - which bestows both an MBA and Master's of Engineering (in Ms. Duncan's case, in Civil Engineering) - a sort of Navy SEALs of the business school world if you will (and I will). This pleases yours truly immensely as yours truly has never had any disdain for engineering degrees and indeed is quite fond of them and might have gotten one himself if it weren't for the fact that there apparently is some kind of pre-requisite that one be a bore of a writer (I jest ... sort of) or at least not so long-winded as I am accustomed to being.

The current summer session is almost entirely independent of the general MBA courses (which begin in the fall). A brief rundown of the program is in order

Summer 2009 - introductory LGO classes (more on these shortly)

Fall 2009 - MBA intro classes taken with Sloan students (Sloan is the MIT Business school) and some LGO/engineering electives

Spring 2010 - MBA and Engineering electives

Summer and Fall 2010 - Internship (almost certainly unpaid) with LGO program sponsors (Ms. Duncan is hoping for somewhere abroad)

Spring 2011 - MBA and Engineering electives and writing LGO thesis and graduation in May

Voila

As for the current session, it is most deranged. All 47 LGO students take the same 5 classes (Operations Management, Probability and Statistics, High Velocity Organizations, System Optimization and Analysis, and Leadership) which are taught in the same classroom. Since all the students take all the same classes in the same classroom, scheduling these classes is incredibly easy and seems to have been done to please various professors' schedules - as far as I can tell, the classes seem to change times every week depending upon which professor is going to a conference (i'm only slightly exagerrating) - my old profs would be enormously jealous.

We'll try to give each class its own post later (although we'll have to do so in a way that no criticisms can be linked back to Ms. Duncan) but a general note on their operation is in order. Each class is graded on homework (of which their is quite a bit), tests (of which we have yet to be acquainted) and participation. I taught before and I gave participation grades and I can't say that I really treated it that seriously - 80% of the people got a B for participation and 10% who I really noticed got an A and 10% who I didn't notice at all got a C or D. I didn't have a teaching assistant.

In these classes a TA is documenting how many times each person speaks in class and whether or not their comments were cogent or vacuous. This to me seems like a good intention leading to a bad conclusion. They already have 47 highly ambitious type A personalities - do you really need to incentivize speaking up? One wonders how the classes ever end.

But then again, the kettle must not degrade the pot.****

Currently, Ms. Duncan spends most mornings in these classes (9ish-12ish) participating to various degrees of success***** and most afternoons in meetings with her El Giocho comrades discussing the various cases and problems given to them and most evenings doing homework and reading while yours truly is stuck doing the dishes.

*Also for shock at the exorbitant salaries demanded by business school grads and also due to the lack of recognition for luck**. I had my own personal theory related to the salaries that I'm hoping will not come true (as I stand to benefit from said exorbitance) - basically that there was/is a business school graduate bubble powered forward by increasing returns effects and incestuous relationships between the top schools and the top financial companies - basically I was thinking that the eventually the bubble would pop and business school grads were start to be valued at a more realistic level - you know what helps a bubble pop - an economic collapse maybe? - hopefully this isn't going to happen, or at least not for MIT LGO grads. I could expound on this theory (and its many holes) but it would take an article of its own.

**I think of luck as one part tenor of the times and one part RightPlaceRightTime-ness. As proof of the tenor of the times point I offer the current times - a preposterous number of incompetents were wildly successful during the latest bubble - it had nothing to do with their MBAs or their education or experience or keen insight or business acumen and everything to do with temporary collective insanity. As for the other part of luck ... being a student of the economics of science and technology has made me intimately familiar with the importance of advancement in S&T for general societal economic advance and for the success of individual business ... but no amount of technological ingenuity or business intuition can substitute for Being in the Right Place at the Right Time - Bill Gates might be a technical genius and a business mastermind but if IBM had called someone else (as they easily might have) in their search for an early OS neither of these great skills would have led to the mammoth monopoly we see today ... and rest assured, there is always someone else lurking in the shadows with the same basic technology that suffered from a deficient quantity of RightPlaceRightTime-orade - see this 1922 paper on the number of inventions which have been independently invented at the same time

***I had enormous trouble with this sentence - first it was 'where are you off to' but that ended in a preposition and that would not be Proper, so I changed to 'to where are you off', when to my surprise, what should I find at the end of the sentence but another preposition! So I finally changed it to the above formation which I think we can all agree is just stupid.

****One wonders how these posts ever end.

*****If you're not called on, are you supposed to inform the TA that you had your hand up, that you were trying to participate but for reasons outside of your control were prevented from doing so?

joyeux anniversaires

Ms. Duncan and yours truly recently celebrated our birthdays (interspersed by the birthday of mon pere). Ms. Duncan celebrated this honorable occasion at the romantic Pigalle, with pork chops. She profited magnificently from the celebration making out with an MIT sweatshirt, an iPhone and best of all, cette blog*.

In addition, Ms. Duncan and three others in her program with very close birthdays feted (at some point I'm going to have to find out how to insert french accents in these posts) the occasions at a class barbecue. Curiously last week's statistics class included an exercise in calculating the probability of the likelihood of two (or more) members of the same class having an identical birthday - its surprisingly high**.

Yours truly celebrated in a more nerdy way by going to a Shakespeare play - Much Ado About Nothing - during which performance i was pulled onstage so that the drunk character could have someone to whom he could ramble on and ultimately implicate himself. Even better, Ms. Duncan prepared 2 peanut butter pies.

In other non-LGO related activities - there was much biking and some introductory sailing on the Charles River. So far, Boston has been an enjoyable place to celebrate birthdays.

*There's actually a double entendre here - the french "blague" meaning joke - a suitable epigram for this entire exercise

**If I recall from my undergraduate statistics class, the correct way to go about doing this is to calculate the probability that no one shares a birthday (which would be (365*364*...*365-(n-2)*365-(n-1))/(365^n) where n=# of students in the class) and then take that probability and subtract it from 1 - thus for a class of 20, the probability of at least 2 students sharing a birthday is something like 0.41 - relatively close to 50/50.

An interesting point was raised by Ms. Duncan's statistics professor - if the probability surprises us, perhaps we need to reassess our assumptions and realign them in a way that allows us to accept the probability without being surprised. A similar curious point was raised in The Metaphysical Club's discussion of the Howland Will case - a case in which a will forgery was revealed by statistical analysis of handwriting - in 1868. Apparently, the revelation that our actions are somewhat governed by statistical laws or that statistical proof might be superior to human testimony was quite shocking to the 19th century American public. Is it any less shocking now?

Le Commencement

A new approach - brevity.

I switched books - gone is the pompous victorian narrator and enter the intense brooding underclass narrator (i just read White Tiger - a sort of Invisible Man for the Indian underclass) ... not really though.

The first week of Ms. Duncan's program had a not too dissimilar appearance to Peace Corps staging/stage (that last word is correctly pronounced with a french accent - staahhje - training for those non-rpcvs) - lots of flip charts and icebreakers or if not actual flip charts and icebreakers than flip chart icebreaker-esque activities. The most notable perhaps being a game in which a group is supposed to pretend that they have crashed in the artic and they only have time to remove a few items from the helicopter before it sinks. First, people rank the items in order of importance on their own and then they rank them as a group - its supposed to show that you gain by group work. Your money back if you can guess the first item on the list.*

Apparently this is a common businessy activity - for a take on a similar activity conducted at GM that reveals a lot about why they have recently become officially America's largest company (note the ownership apostrophe - and pronounce apostrophe with a french accent if you want to be particularly snotty - as I do) see here.

Another common business activity - teamwork. During the first day, the class was split up into 8 different groups - groups that will doggedly persist throughout the summer semester. Ms. Duncan joined group 8, AKA El Giochos**

Another common business activity - watching Dead Poets Society (as I recall the movie was good but imagine how interesting it would have been if it had been Dead Poet's Society - a sort of melange of zombies the fantastic four - but in verse!). Apparently, the movie is filled with various leadership styles that serve as a useful guiding point for discussion. Also on tap was some war movie that I forget the name of for the moment - as soon as I remember it, i'll edit the post and we'll pretend this memory lapse never happened.

Yet another common business activity - wall climbing and walking around blind folded. The third day took place on an island in the bay that has been appropriated for business bonding purposes. Some of the activities involve being led around by a partner blindfolded (apparently somewhat interminably or so a little birdy tells me) and the climbing of objects (presumably sans blindfold).

Little will be said of the blindfold (as little was seen) but as for the climbing, a petit digression is called for.

Yours truly is a big fan of climbing of objects and if I may brag a little there is a virtually uncountable list of objects that I have had the honor of mounting (mounds, hills, mountains, couches, chairs, countertops, shoulders, diving boards, stairs, elephants, walls, etc.). But Ms. Duncan is entirely unimpressed by such feats of vertical ascension. Now some people might take this as a metaphor - an example if you will that shows that Ms. Duncan is somewhat deficient in the finer points of ambition - i.e. she has no drive to get to the top so to speak. But this would be digging to deep to use another metrically measureable metaphor. I assure you, she is incredibly ambitious - as judged by her entering this program - she just cares little for physically being on top of objects, in particular tall objects. Again, this has nothing to do with any phobias - in fact, as long as I've known her I cannot recall any signs of any clear phobias*** - she is not scared of being on top of objects, rather she is completely indifferent and tall objects require even more time in the mounting, thus her indifference eventually manifests into disdain. Thus, when it came time for her to climb said businessy object with the encouragement of her peers Ms. Duncan went halfway up, declared herself satisfied with this accomplishment (this was almost certainly a lie - a little one, just to feign respect for an activity for which she cared not at all) and jumped off.**** Needless to say, her compatriots were somewhat confused by this behavior and Ms. Duncan did not deign to explain herself.

As for other activities, there was an introduction to case studies, several speakers, building of egg droppers (most passengers sadly did not make it) yada yada yada, and of course - for business schoolers are nothing if not vain - a professional photo shoot.

So much for the brevity.

Before we part dear reader*****, a note on businessy activities and gender for Ms. Duncan is nothing if not the most dedicated of feminists (or vain - see above). It is at least curious that the two movies that were shown had almost all male casts (an all boys school and the military) - to be fair they did show one speech by a female CEO (see - this is what women leaders are like!) - and that of the other prominent business activities, one involved physical activity (climbing of objects) and another involved camping knowledge (ranking of survival tools) and this is to say nothing of the multitude of sports metaphors utilized throughout the week. One wonders how the week would have gone if women ruled the roost.

All in all, an interesting, mostly useful if a little exhausting (8-5 days) introduction to the program.

More to come later on actual classes, living in Boston and the occurence of two days for the celebration of a personally important rotation of the earth around the sun.

*matches - duh. and since this website is free - you get nothing - wah ha ha

**taken from LGO and the hispanic 8 for those who don't want to take the time to think deeply about an existentially meaningless factoid ... one wonders if they call themselves the El Giochos, as in the the Giochos - similar to The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (the the angels angels of anaheim)

***although she still makes me kill all the insects (with apologies to Matt)

****she was attached by a rope to the top so don't get worried that she was injured in the jump

*****it appears that the pompous victorian novelist will persist for a little while

Le Bouleversement

Short version - we move to boston after finishing work and education - we're settling in

Long Version - 

This humble author recently composed a 40 page research paper on the photovoltaics industry (quite entertaining I assure you). During my writing I like to throw in somewhat random literary references and foreign language words and this paper had its share - including the use of "bouleversement". It's one of my favorite french words in that its sound seems to convey its meaning of an overturning - being bowled over or inverted and upturned - a sort of french counterpart to the easily understandable english 'discombabulated'. Unfortunately, it turns out to be an english word as well... harrummph.

Néanmoins (or if you prefer the english, nonetheless*), Ms. Duncan and her handsome SO have certainly experienced quite the bouleversement what with the recent parting from the nation's capital and the voyage to the wicked awesome city on a hill. Ms. Duncan ended her superstar position at Northrop Grumman (she was the superstar, not the position) at the end of the first week of May (there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments and such frivolities at her place d'emploi). Concurrently, the SO concluded his aforementioned research paper (available upon request) - his final labor required for his degree of mastership (why when you get a doctorate, you're referred to as a doctor, but when I get a master's no one refers to me as the master?). We temporarily moved from our southwest efficiency to the house of our lovely former landlords (the illustrious Matt and Rachel), took advantage of visiting parents for an excellent (and expensive) repas (french and old english for meal**), walked across a stage for graduation, went on a cruise***, mailed 7 packages to Boston, and then drove up in gypsy**** style - our tiny but beloved prius packed to the gills.

After the 9 hour trip from DC to Boston via Baltimore, Philidelphia, Trenton, Newark, New York City, New Haven, and Providence (apparently I-95 was created as a contestant for the Guiness book of world records in the category of longest continuous traffic jam - in both the time and distance sub-divisions), we arrived at our humble summer abode (pictures forthcoming) - a sublet***** right above central square in cambridge that was disconcertingly not entirely empty of our landlords' possessions. To the surprise of yours truly, not only did our packages arrive the next day (fully intact - including the bicycle we mailed), but everything actually fit in our apartment with room to spare. Tout le monde est invités de prendre un séjour avec nous dans cette belle ville (you're invited). As for being invited in the fall, we'll wait and see how large the student family housing rooms are.

We've somewhat settled in, we've taken a bike ride to the "beach" (my florida mother scoffed, justifiably at this appellation), we've dined out in a couple of nice restaurants and we've drunk****** at a couple of nice pubs.

We're still lacking in that most precious of commodity (dear friends), but hopefully this will be a temporary malady as we fully intend to force some of our DC friends to move up here (at gunpoint if need be)... alternatively, we could find new friends... harrumph once more.

Up next, an overview of Ms. Duncan's first week at school ... she looked so cute getting onto the bus with her bear-shaped backpack and her cabbage pack kids lunch box.

*if you haven't gathered already, I assure you this will be an endlessly pompous blog

**I really do think some of the pompousness will end when I finish reading Vanity Fair - a 19th century book with a very pompous and overbearing narrator

***the cruise was nice in that we had absolutely no pressing demands for a week (or at least no pressing demands we could do anything about), but it failed to live up to expectations in that we suffered a rocky and rainy voyage down to the bahamas, spent a total of 20 minutes off the boat in the bahamas (alright, it was a little longer than that, but not by much), and we're surrounded by gluttony the likes of which I have not seen since my last trip to the chinese buffet with my fraternity brothers - the second comedien was nice though

****the 42nd longest english non-vowellic word

*****Over the objection of Ms. Duncan I've decided to bring up that somewhat uncouth subject of funds in regards to our living situation for the benefit of those moving to cambridge in the future. For the summer we're paying 1400/month plus utilities plus parking for a one bedroom apartment right above the subway in central square cambridge (and we actually received a discount - our landlords pay 1700/month i think). C'est incroyable!

*****I propose that we abolish drunk as verb form of drink and instead utilize it only as an adjective*******

*******Mostly the footnotes are just to annoy Ms. Duncan

About this blog

Short Version: this blog is about Tyeliah Duncan's LGO experience, ghost written by her SO (significant other)

Long Version:

If you've done any research on the program - and you almost certainly have if you've ended up here - then you must know that the program is intensely time consuming. As such, Tyeliah Duncan (LGO '11) is a little bit too busy to update various readers and/or family members of her progress in the program on a regular basis. Furthermore, Ms. Duncan has gained a significant amount of management experience and has learned the fine art of delegation (thus extending the famous quote sometimes attributed to H. L. Mencken or George Bernard Shaw - "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" - by adding "those who want to make money, delegate" - personally, I prefer the woody allen extension - "those who can't teach, teach PE"). Therefore she has searched near and far for someone to whom she can delegate the fine art of LGO scribe.

She didn't really have to search very far at all. It just so happens that Ms. Duncan has a significant other with a fair amount of time on his hands (what with being grossly underemployed at the moment) and a keen way with words that he wishes to practice on a semi-regular basis in the service of his dearly beloved (I'm reading 19th century english literature so if I happen to stumble into aristocratic tones for a moment, please forgive me - it will only be a temporary phase). Perhaps you've heard of him - he's the noted author of unfinished and unpublished possible classics such as "The Post-Modern Prometheus", "Charlie 'Midas' Brown", or the self-referential "The Writer Becomes a Writer by Writing" (a working title)... Perhaps not.

Nonetheless, it is to this amanuensis that the 'manual' labor or writing goes. Me thinks a brief biography of both principles is in order.

Ms. Tyeliah Elaine Duncan:

Born in OKC, OK; attended 13 different schools in 12 years (not entirely accurate, but close); went to community college in OKC; transferred to Michigan (University Of) and graduated with a BS in Industrial Engineering; served in Peace Corps Burkina Faso as a middle school Math and Biology teacher (met aforementioned significant other in said poor country); worked as in english teacher at Chengdu University of Information Technology in Chengdu, China; worked as Systems Engineer and then Manager Project and Planning Second Class (I'm just making up job titles) with Northrop Grumman in support of the FAA in Washington, DC; currently is attending MIT's LGO program from which she will receive an SM (in Civil Engineering) and an ABM (I'm not sure if MIT gives the MBA degree backwards but I think they do it for everything else) in two years time; has been described as witty (mostly by herself - she finds it funniest when only she gets the joke), extremely intelligent (by yours truly and many others), a true superstar (by her last boss), an excellent manager, a committed feminist ... what else ... oh yes, ambitious, driven, sassy, and occasionally ornery - many have also noted that she has an extremely intelligent, charming and handsome significant other.

Significant Other (henceforth referred to as Peaceful Tiger Mountain ... not really - henceforth referred to as SO):

born in New Orleans where he was schooled in the ancient Dahomian art of Houdou which he infuses into his language to bewitch unsuspecting readers; spent four years in solitude in the Rub'al Khali (the desolate Arabian desert known as the empty quarter) learning the secrets of the pizza sheik (although he took frequent breaks from the solitude to play with his GI Joes); ventured to the American midwest where he joined the viscious St. Louis gang known as the 'Cardinal Nation' and became a master of the ninja weapon the Coltrane Katana (otherwise known as the Saxophone) with which he can deliver sonic death; returned to New Orleans to advance his houdou skills to the next level by immersing himself in the study of Politic Science at the Sacred Temple of the Green Wave; voyaged abroad to the resort country of Burkina Faso (where he met Ms. Duncan) for a year and a of half blissful relaxation; traveled to far east (nothing exotic discovered there); came to houdou capital (washington, DC) where he studied the politics and economics of primitive magic*; infiltrated the confines of the rival gang 'Red Sox Nation.'; the SOs personality need not be described as it will be revealed in his frequently ridiculous writings.

In all seriousness, the SO (me) is pursuing work in the renewable energy industry and will soon have his own website up focusing on news in the solar energy industry.

*From Clarke's 3rd law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"