Knowledge Sharing Sessions for GD/PI Call Getters

[subodh_iit]

Friends,

I am starting this thread so that each one of us (who have got time) can share their GD/PI preparation strategies and share some interesting tidbits daily.

The format shall be DATE - Diary Writings (Can contain whatever u studied today, learned or anything else. The discussion should not be too technical. Should be well understood by a general guy).

The Thread shall serve two purposes. First, it shall give everyone an idea about the competition and second, it should motivate everyone about the GD/PI Preparation so that slow starters can start their prep.

PS: Mods - If you feel this thread is unnecessary or is better represented elsewhere, please feel free to close it.

[subodh_iit]

DATE - JAN 18, 2006

My day started with having a look at The Snapshots from Hell that I purchased from a nukkad shop only yesterday. I purchased it for Rs. 75 after bargaining hard and getting Rs. 90 initial price to be reduced to 75. Very Good Price for such a nice book especially after Amazon duped me of Rs. 940/- for a similar book The Fast Track 3 months back.

The book explains the travails of a poet at Stanford MBA program. As poets are handicapped mathematically, Stanford arranges mathematical classes for them b4 the term begins. Today, I read the first chapter which detailed these mathematical classes by Prof. Cooper – a master teacher. He is quite adept at motivating students to learn. He gives them 2 mathematical gems.

• If I take a piece of paper and fold it 32 times, what would be the thickness of the resulting bundle? Students Answered – 2 inches, 10 inches, some even 100 feet. Correct Answer - ~271 miles (Just think about it)?
• Then he asks each one to submit a paper to him remarking his date of birth on it. After that he remarked I am betting $5 on the assumption that 2 of u have same birthdays. (There were 50 students/poets/artists in the class. Remember no bankers/consultants/engineers attend these classes. Total strength of 1988 batch was 313) Every one thought that Prof was offering an easy $5. And 3 students even bet $5 each. Prof Cooper lifted the first slip and read the date on it. Three hands went up. And Prof earned a cool $15. (The probability that any 2 students in a class of 50 have the same birthday is 97%. Think about it. So the Prof was not offering an easy bet. He was offering an extremely difficult one.)

Looking at these 2 examples, I cannot help but think about a particular incident when I took the help of a paradox to help my sis understand the well known Physics problem: Two Trains are approaching each other with speeds v1 and v2 and a fly is flying in between them with speed v3 back and forth. How many trips will the fly make and what distance will it travel b4 the trains collide.

The paradox is: If a rabbit starts from behind a tortoise, no matter how fast a rabbit run and no matter how slowly a tortoise run the rabbit will never be able to overtake tortoise.

Explanation: Suppose rabbit starts from A and tortoise from B. Now A is behind B. When the rabbit reaches B, the tortoise will have reached C, somewhat ahead of B. When rabbit reaches C, the tortoise will have reached D, again ahead of C. And this will go on until infinity.

Flaw in the Reasoning: It works on the assumption that if this will go on until infinity the distance and time after which the rabbit will overcome tortoise will also be infinity. Sadly it is an infinite decreasing GP. That means even after infinite such loops, rabbit will cross tortoise in finite time and distance.

My sis went gaga over my reasoning prowess. No other teacher explained the question to her like that in so simple terms and with such an analogy that she will never forgot.

So Am I a Cooper in the making? Robinson’s glamorous account of Cooper has led me already dream about addressing the Stanford Class from the well at a sub-30 age. (I want to see stunned 30 year olds sitting in the class of a confident 28-29 year person. No Connor was much older. But I want to surpass him.) Forgive me for being superconfy. It is only a dream.. Hehe I am not that much capable..

Enough Snapshots of Hell for today. Office is Calling.

So had my breakfast and hurried to office. Reached Office at 11:30.

Completed some coding events that have been assigned to me for an Insurance Product. Dropped a mail to the back-end guy at 2 PM to complete the testing.

Did not follow-up with him as I wanted a day’s rest before beginning with further work and he also did not bother to disturb me. Had my Lunch at KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) at 02:30. Received a call from my batchmate who received BLACKI about joining a GD/PI batch. I asked him to call me after he has joined one. “I will join whichever u join” I said.

In between I had a long chat with Chango – a fabulous person. He is my first online friend – I mean without any physical interaction (Do not take it the other way.) Hats off to pagalguy – it gives u such great online friends. Chango is a fabulous guy. Unlike most of my friends from IITs, he does not have a myopic view. And best of all, he was the first one (other than me) who dared to criticize Fountainhead.

@ Chango, I could not figure out why you asked me Do u believe in destiny? I kept thinking about it while having my lunch.


Came back to office. And went through an online edition of Atlas Shrugged. Just by going through the topics, I figured out something important. My monologue:



I got to lay my hands on ATLAS SHRUGGED today and only by looking at the titles of the chapters, my long held suspicions got confirmed.. She has heavily lifted her contents from Freidrich Nietzche's sublime piece of Art Thus Spake Zarathustra. In Fountainhead her theme of the Superman is loosely based on Nietzsche 's Superman.

And her style of writing is heavily influenced by Fyodor Dostoevsky. If you get to read The Brothers Karamazov some day, just go through the speech by one of the lawyers in the end. The lengthy monologue by the protagonist Howard Roark is quite like that but somewhat low on content and high on repetitions of already stated points.

Overall I will rate works of Ayn Rand as second class both for their literary value and philosophical content. Primarily because, leterary value wise Dostoevsky's 3 novels - Brothers Karamazov, Idiot, Crime & Punishment are much better. And philosophic content wise the original Thus Spake Zarathustra scores over the sequel Fountainhead.

I will go through the Atlas Shrugged and find out how much plagiarism Rand has committed.

Some titles from Atlas Shrugged
The Chain
The Top and the Bottom
he Immovable Movers
The Climax of the D'Anconias
The Non-Commercial
The Exploiters and the Exploited

Some Titles from TSZ

1. The Three Metamorphoses.
2. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
3. Backworldsmen.
4. The Despisers of the Body.
5. Joys and Passions.
6. The Pale Criminal.
7. Reading and Writing.
8. The Tree on the Hill.
9. The Preachers of Death.
10. War and Warriors.
11. The New Idol.
12. The Flies in the Market-place.

If u happen to get some time in the future, go through The Brothers Karamazov. You will definitely like it.. An excellent work of fiction. About Thus Spake Zarathustra I am not a competent authority to elucidate. I tried to read it 2-3 times. Could not go beyond initial 2-3 chapters. A single chapter of the book looks like a complete philosophical treatise and requires a lifetime of contemplation. Mebbe if u like it, u can read it fully. But at least it is beyond me - both in comprehension and contemplation. Still the first 2-3 chapters will give you the outline of the Nietzsche's Superman and the novel.

My Conclusion on Ayn Rand: Her style may be somewhat overwrought and her characters cardboard, but she is a genius at plotting, and she knows how to tell a story (courtesy the now forgotten Dostoevsky - the greatest storyteller of all time). (Quite like what Thomas Whissen said about Rand.)

Tidbits of Info: Despite receiving terrible critical reviews, both her works of fiction Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead were massive hits (largely due to word of mouth). Literary scholars have largely ignored her works. After Atlas Shrugged Rand concentrated on philosophical non-fiction. But her philosophical works have generally received negligible attention.
Destiny at Play.


WORDS OF PRAISE from me: In a male dominated society achievements of Rand are exemplary. Her works look beyond the typical feminist theories. She has succeeded in making the concept of Nietzsche's Superman known to every educated person, which Nietzsche failed to do, because of the complexity of his work. Her efforts to mix Dostoevsky's style of writing and Nietzsche's superman are praiseworthy.



After that I got bored from all this. Just went to some previous years’ questions and started preparing.

• GSM – Read it. Too boring. The Base Station and all that nonsense.
• SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) - Easily understood it.
• CDMA – Extremely complex technology.
• WCDMA – Another complex rhetoric by technocrats. God!! Main isme kahaan phas gaya?

Left it at that.

My friend had come from Russia (He is working in Schlumberger.) I plan to left the office at 07:00 to meet him.

Rest tomorrow.

[subodh_iit]

My Friday souvenir: (Jan 19, 2007)

Non-Computer Science people can skips this portion
I covered:
1.Diodes: p-n dodes and I-V (current-voltage) characteristics
2.Transistors: Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) and Field Effect Transistors (FETs) esp. MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors)
3.Networking Topics:
a.RIP: Routing Information Protocol
b.BGP: Border Gateway Protocol
c.OSPF: Open Shortest Path First
d.ICMP: Internet Control Management Protocol
e.IGMP: Internet Group Management Protocol
f.ARP: Address Resolution Protocol
4.Phosphors – Phosphorescence, Photoluminescence, Electroluminescence
5.Latch and Flip Flops
6.Operating System Concepts:
a.Thrashing
b.Demand Paging – Lazy Loading Techniques
c.DMA (Direct Memory Access)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 4:30 the office building was evacuated as it caught fire and almost within 15-20 minutes, it was brought under control by the Disaster Management Group. At 5:30 I felt a terrible headache and tried to overcome it but could not. Went back home and could not fathom any reason for it. So got into bed and fell asleep at 5:40.

When I awoke, it was Saturday morning and 01:30 AM and I was feeling as fresh as ever. So, this headache was due to lack of sleep. What will happen to me during MBA if this is the story now when I continually take more than 7 hours of sleep .

[subodh_iit]

Saturday: Jan 20, 2007

Now that I have been able to get through one complete section of Snapshots from Hell, I am in a position to give you good insight of the book.

Character Sketch (All ages as in Fall 198
1.Stray Characters

Ronald Reagan
President, USA (1980-198

Peter Robinson
Narrator & Author, 31 years
Dartmouth BA (Literature), Oxford MA (English)
Acted as Presidential Speechwriter at Whitehouse for 3 years.

Milton Friedman
Nobel Laureate Economist,
Stanford Professor and Reagan’s friend.
Reagan urged Author to meet him at Stanford.

Edita
Author’s Girlfriend
Whitehouse Staff, Joined AGSIM, Phoenix
Left after 1st term.

Steven
Author’s Dartmouth Classmate.
Stanford GSB (Global School of Business) MBA
Acting Management Consultant.
Motivated the Author to pursue MBA and greener pastures.


2.Stanford GSB Faculty

Character

Stanley Slowacki
Associate Dean,
Took Computer Camp Classes for Non-Mathematics background people a.k.a. poets.

Esther Simon
Director, Office of Student Affairs

Sonia Jensen
Director, Administration

George Cooper
Professor,
Took Mathematics Camp for poets

Omar Kemal
Assoc. Professor, Ages: Late 20s
Decision Making Under Uncertainty
Did BS (Mathematics) from MIT and passed out at 19 years.

Yeager (Hard Ass)
Professor, Age: 50s
Microeconomics

Seungjin Park a.ka. Jim
Professor, Age: 40
Computer Modeling

Robert Hammond a.k.a. Bob
Professor, Age: Late 30s,
Organizational Behavior

Walt
Assistant Professor, Age: Late 20s
Accounting


3.Author’s Classmates

Conor O’Flaherty
Irish National, Age: Early 30s
Dublin University Graduate in Philosophy, Worked as Civil Servant in Irish Government.
Married. First Friend of Author at Stanford.

Joe Toscana
Author’s Housemate, Age: 26
Economics Grad from Rutgers
Analyst, Salmon Brothers for 4 years

Philippe Rougemont
Author’s housemate, Age: 28
Swiss National, Lawyer Background, Belonged to a family of Bankers.

Rupert Duplin
British National, Aristocratic Lineage. Age: Late 20s

Zenichiro Takagawa
Japanese National,
Weak English Skills, Mitsui Engineer

Gunnar Hakonsen a.k.a. Mr. Cool
Eco Grad, Amherst, Age: 25 years
Financial Analyst, Bear Sterns for 3 years

John Lyons a.k.a. Mr. Perfect
Duke Univ Grad, Age: 26 years
Analyst, Leopard Securities for 3 years (MBA sponsored by company)

Jim
Maths Grad, Harvard, Age: Early 20s

Susan
Alabama Woman, Author’s Study group member

Doug
Former Military Man, Author’s Study group member

Jennifer Taylor
Minneapolis resident, Age: 24 years

Sam Barrett
North Carolina School of Design Grad, Age: 28
Motto – “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

Book Summary:
Poets refer to people with Non-mathematical background and Non-Mathematical job-experience.

September: Mathematics Camp & Computer Camp for poets (Around 50 in 1990 batch).

Stanford Batch Composition:
Divided in three sections with ~110 students each. Total – 333
Students had graduated from 127 undergraduate institutions and came from 21 countries.
Age Range: 22-42
Average Age: 27.5
Age Composition: 1/3rd > 30 1/3rd between 28 and 30 1/3rd less than 28
Number of Women: 83 (i.e. 1 women for every 3 men)

Fall ’88 term or First term of ’90 batch (September end to mid-December):
Subjects:
1.Decision Making under Uncertainty or Trees
2.Microeconomics
3.Accounting
4.Organizational Behavior
5.Computer Modeling and Linear Programming

Grading System: On a 4 point scale.
H – Equivalent to A at other American schools (including Harvard). 4 points
P+ – Equivalent to B at other American schools. 3 points
P – Equivalent to C at other American schools. 2 points
P- – Equivalent to D at other American schools. 1 point
U – Equivalent to F at other American schools. 0 points

Stanford Recruitment System: Grades are not revealed to recruiters at Stanford.

[subodh_iit]

Sunday, January 21, 2007

More from Sanpshots ...

SUMMER INTERNSHIP DRAMA

Conor O’Flaherty – $10K for 10 weeks
Offer: Apple Computers Inc.
Rejects: All major IB and MC firms
Accepts: Apple Computers Inc.

Peter Robinson/Author – $10K for 10 weeks
Offer: Dillon Read
Rejects: Mckinsey
Accept: Dillon Read

Joe Toscana – $10K for 10 weeks
Offer – All major IB firms
Reject – None
Accept – Shearson Lehman Brothers

Philippe Rougemont – $10K for 10 weeks
Offer – Kidder Peabody
Reject – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, First Boston, Salmon Brothers
Accept – Kidder Peabody

John Lyon a.k.a Mr. Perfect – $15K for 10 weeks
Offer – Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, First Boston, + 3 big IB firms
Reject – None
Accept – Leopard Securities

Gunnar Hakonsen a.k.a. Mr. Cool – $20K for 10 weeks
Offer – Wasserstein Perella
Reject – None
Accept – Wasserstein Perella

Jennifer Taylor – $10K for 10 weeks
Offer – General Mills
Rejects – All IB firms
Accept – General Mills

Rupert Dupplin – $10K for 10 weeks
Offer – Mckisnsey, BCG, BoozHamilton for London operations, Bain for US-UK
Rejects – None
Accept – Bain

Zen – $8K for 10 weeks
Offers – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bear Sterns, Paine Webber
Reject – Salmon Brothers
Accept – Mitsui, (Paine Webber for the time being but did not join)

Final Placements:

Conor O’Flaherty – Irish Insurance Company (Self Hunt) in Frankfurt. Fired after 9 months. After 1 year without a job was hired by an Asian Bank in Dublin

Peter Robinson – Rupert Murdoch (Media Personnel), Rejected offers for Personal Assistants for Steve Jobs and Robert Maxwell (British Media Baron)
Fired after 1 year with Murdoch in deep financial crisis. Became a
Research fellow at Hoover Institute and a business/political writer

Joe Toscana – Salmon Brothers. Survived a scandal after 10 months when everyone including his boss resigned

Sam Barrett – Portland Design Firm. Later started operating a wind surfing shop in Maui.

Louisa Pallegrino – Environmental Protection Agency in Washington

Philippe Rougemont – Goldman Sachs M&A, Remained on bench for 1 year. After that, repositioned to Europe. Became the Eastern European Expert.

John Lyon a.k.a Mr. Perfect – Leopard Securities. Earned $5 million in his second year.

Gunnar Hakonsen a.k.a. Mr. Cool – Morgan Stanley NY Office Latin American Division (Most Profitable)

Jennifer Taylor – General Mills. Started dating vice-prez of North Western Airlines.

Rupert Dupplin – Mckinsey. 1st year in US. After that in London.

Zen – Mitsui in Osaka. Slated for promotion and may well be shifted to Australia.

[piyushs]

how is this knowledge sharing dude? snapshots from hell may or may not figure in every interview!

[subodh_iit]

I just thought it will be interesting for ppl prepping for GD/PI to have an insight of an MBA.. And will be useful for the ppl who are contemplating reading it. On the weekend I didn't do anything more useful than this. Hence shared watever knowledge I gained..

[raul_v20]

hey... i feel we should share some things which will be helpful for all....

[subodh_iit]

Monday, January 22, 2007

An interesting speech that I came across. We must be able to better answer some Why’s and How’s after reading it.
Microsoft CEO,Steve Balmer spoke at HBS recently.He is an HBS undergrad and a Stanford MBA dropout. The following are the highlights of his highly energetic and engaging presentation.

1.Microsoft's multi core strategy , the four cores being
A.Personal productivity software
B.Enterprise productivity software
C.Online world
D.Entertainment world

2.To be a successful leader in the hi tec world you need
A.Broad curiosity
B.Knowledge of technology and business
C.Empathy

3.Target costing for developing countries based on Mukesh Ambani's principle. Mukesh happens to be his classmate at Stanford.
A.Figure out the selling price based on the market's willingness to pay.
B.Subtract from A the profit margins.
C.Arrive at target cost.
D.Ask your team to come up with products and services honoring the target cost.

4.Market segmentation for developing countries.
A.Top echelons of the society - Serve them the products that you would sell to all rich people in the world.The needs of the rich are the same globally.
B.Middle class - Localize the products.Give teams in developing countries the autonomy to
define and develop such products and features.
C.Lower class - Pay for use model. Similar to Unilever's pay for a drop model for shampoos. The idea here is to pay for each drop of information.

Good News for the guys targeting IIMB.
The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) has teamed up with the Stanford Graduate School of Business to launch the Stanford-IIM-B exchange programme. This programme will be offered to 16 graduate business students each from IIM-B and Stanford starting from the next academic year.These students will work together in eight small teams of four students, two from each school. In subsequent years, the programme will expand to 20 students from each institution.In a sequential two-way exchange, Stanford Business students will go to IIM-B for a period of one week (September 16-22, 2007) and the IIM-B students will visit Stanford Business School for one week (December 2-8, 2007).Indian students selected to go to Stanford will have 75% of their expenses paid by Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries, who is also on the board of governors of IIM-B. Mr Ambani is also an alumni of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.The students of Stanford Graduate School will pay for their travel expenses. “Students will be selected on the basis of their academic performance, applications and recommendations of professors,” said G Shainesh, associate professor of marketing, IIM-B.Exchange visits will be organised along three core aspects: academics, business and social activities. Components of the programme are expected to include visits to locally-based companies, reading, presentations, classroom interaction and lectures delivered by faculty, business professionals and possibly public sector leaders. The programme will conclude with student presentations during the IIM-B students’ visit to Stanford.

Disclaimer: Technically speaking, Mr. Mukesh Ambani is not a Stanford Alumni as he dropped out during the first year itself owing to his father’s illness. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was Mukesh’s (Mukesh did his undergrad from Bombay University in Chemical Engineering) classmate and he also dropped out in the 1st year itself. (Steve did his undergrad from Harvard) Maybe these men had something else in mind to achieve their objectives in life rather than hard grind at Stanford. However what surprises everyone is the fact that Mukesh is a bit reluctant to accept that he dropped out of Stanford MBA . Steve Ballmer had him (Mukesh) quite embarrassed when he mentioned at a speech in jest that both of them are not MBAs and have no right to address chief executives. All said and done, College dropouts turn out to be richer than non-dropouts. Bill Gates and Larry Ellison are Undergrad dropouts. Azim Premji is also Stanford undergrad dropout.

[subodh_iit]

Maths Review


1. Discrete Maths -
Graphs - Connected/Unconnected, Adjacency List, Adjacency Matrix
Trees - How are they different from Graphs
Why is it discrete Maths?
2. Fundamental Theorem of Calculus -
The two central operations - differentiation and integration are inverse of each other.
Elementary Proof of the statement.
3. Practical Applications of Derivatives
1. For finding optimal solution to Maxima/Minima problems.
2. Used in Newton-Raphson method for calculating approximation to a function.

Practical Application of Indefinite Integral
1. To derive displacement, velocity and acceleration formulae.
2. To derive physical formulae for Capacitor Voltage.

Practical Applications of Integration
1. Computation of Geometrical Areas.
2. Probability and Statistics
3. Computation of various physical quantities like Moment of Inertia, Electric and Gravitation fields and potential etc.

Fields in which Applied Calculus is used:
1. Physics
2. Statistics
3. Most Engineering Disciplines

Vector Calculus - Multivariate Real Analysis of vectors in 2 or more dimensions.
Vector Calculus Operations:
1. Gradient
2. Curl
3. Divergence
Had a look at Laplacian and Jacobian - Did not understand a bit

Differential Equations: An equation which involves the derivatives of an unknown function represented by a dependent variable.

e.g. dy/dx = y Linear Ordinary Differential Equation

Laplace Transform
Used for analyzing Linear Time Invariant systems like electric circuits and harmonic oscillators.

Fourier Transform:
A mathematical tool used for decomposition of a function into a continuous spectrum of its frequency components.

Discrete Fourier Transform:
Used in Signal Processing, to solve partial differential equation and to perform convolutions.

Fourier Series:
A mathematical tool used for analyzing periodic functions by decomposing such a function into a weighted sum of much simpler sinusoidal functions.

Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic - My Elective at 4th year.

From tomorrow onwards, will commence last year Interview threads' browsing.