A "Rude" Indian Deconstructs Wasilew's Line-Barging Index
Sunil Sachan
Issue date: 11/24/03 Section: GSB Life
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Ok - I read this article about how stressful first year is and how stressed out first years and the entirely too familiar story that the first years have to tell. Interestingly (or not so interestingly) I also read about how several people have experienced snubbing at the hand of their peers. Considering that several second years (including myself) have been snubbed by the first years, first year snubbing first years is not a big surprise. But the mysterious Ghe Line-Barging Index stimulated my curiosity.
Also, the fact that the author, Zachary Wasilew, has actually managed to quantify the "snubbing index", with just over 2 months of education at the most quantitative school appeals to my thought (yeah that's how good GSB is). Anyways, for those who haven't read the article, the author has come up with a rating in which he ranks countries according to their rudeness level - India scores in the 90th percentile in this ranking.
The fact that he has chosen countries and not people motivated me to analyze this in more detail. I think the absolute brilliance with which he has singled out the fact that the people from India are rude and mean SOB's is outstanding. As with all brilliant analysis, I feel compelled to do more follow up work. (Note: I am guessing the author has clubbed all the folks from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka under India. Since people from South Asia can't make out the difference, I bet the author can't. To keep things simple, I will use author's broad "geographical" boundaries)
According to the author, the line barging index is an "inexact science" - now that does come as a surprise to me because I thought quantitative scores were arrived at by detailed quantitative analysis. This makes me think that Zachary is being modest about his quantitative skills.
According to Zachary, LBI is proportional to Speed to front of the line and Number of people passed in line and inversely to the expectation of Reprisal for stepping in front of those who politely believed in system of queues.
So unlike Zachary, I am not a quant jock, so to me if a person has a high LBI index, he/she has to be the first (or among the first) to reach a recruiter and has to pass a bunch of unsuspecting nice people. Now, I am thinking since there are only 3 variables involved, one of the ways a person can rank people in order of rudeness is to assign weights to each of the variables (a linear regression could do that) and then rank everybody attending the presentation based on the linear equation you come up with.
Now if you fall under the 90th percentile it means that 90% of the people in ranked order are less rude than you. Next question - how do you get to the result that India ranked in the 90th percentile? So this means that you rank countries and not people. So if India ranks in the 90th percentile, it means that 90% of the countries are less rude than India. Now even in the metaphysical sense, how is one country more or less rude than another? Maybe Zachary is taking a course that I have not.
However, just like all the follow up work to brilliant analysis, I will follow another, simpler, (and probably un-quantitative quasi-cool analysis that the Zach-ites of the GSB might not like). But here are some facts:
Well-known fact # 1: Rudeness factor Banking Presentations > Rudeness factor Consulting Presentations
Well-known fact # 2: Number of first years pursuing Banking ยป Number of people pursuing consulting
Little-known fact # 3: Number of Indians pursuing consulting > Number of Indian pursuing Banking
Author's premise: India is ruder than 90% of the other nations represented at GSB
Now if we combine fact # 2, fact # 3 and the author's premise, we should be able to conclude that rudeness in the Consulting presentations should be exceeding that in the Banking industry, but this contradicts fact #1. Now this means that either our assumption is wrong or we have our facts wrong? Now we know #1 & #2 can't be wrong (historical data) - so is fact # 3 wrong? Well, I guess not, but this can be easily checked by going to any banking and consulting presentation. So maybe the author's inexact science is flawed? Seems unlikely some may say. So let's do this analysis another way:
In the first and second years, there are about 43 people from India (campus MBA students from India - face-book research). Now, I think this number is low because it does not count those people who are permanent residents or those who are too "cool" to be associated with a developing country. Now, statistics from the South Asia Business group tell us that there are about 55 first-year members in the group. So, to be more credible, I will start with this number.
Now, from another year of experience at GSB, I think about 40% (or 21) of these are money loving, power hungry folks. Assuming 100% of these money-loving folks are rude, (along with the earlier mentioned adjectives), we have 21 rude wannabe Indian bankers.
Now, a typical banking presentation has about 200 attendees. So let's break this according to demographics. The first year profile says,
US citizens - 65% (130 wannabe bankers)
International - 27% (54 wannabe too bankers)
Permanent Residents - 8% (16 wannabe too too bankers)
Out of 150 attendees, let's assume 10% of these (or 20 people) are power hungry, money loving and rude. This number is pretty high since we know that, (Number of rude people at a presentation < Number of recruiters present), or else mayhem would break lose. According to Zach, India ranks in the 90th percentile, US ranks in the 30th percentile, France in the 60th percentile, and Switzerland in the 10th percentile.
Now, let's leave the percentile system for a second. To be ranked among the top quartile, most of the rude ambitious folks need to come from India. Connecting the data points from earlier, we have 20 rude wannabe Bankers at a presentation > 21 possible rude wannabe Bankers from India. Now this is possible only in one of 4 ways:
1) Some rude Indian wannabe bankers miss some presentation (but we know those people are not serious about banking, hence we can rule out this one)
2) Of the possible 21 rude Indian wannabe bankers, only 15 decide to be rude on one particular day
3) There are more than 20 rude wannabe bankers at a presentation OR
4) Less than 40% of Indians are rude - which would bring this number down to 20, but would mean all the rude SOB's were Indians. Now if that were true, in the LBI scoring index, there would be only one country - yours truly India.
Now if any of the above possibilities are true, how do you conclude that India (and not those 20 Indians) is ruder than rest of the world??? I guess inexact science sprinkled with some good quantitative analysis (read seeds of good imagination) does the trick. Is that acceptable at the Mecca of analytical thought?
I guess I have made my point above. I was one of the DSAC application readers last year and every one of the applications I read mentioned how they wanted to come to the GSB because of the "diversity". Zachary - I hope you thought about that as well when you picked schools to apply to. That makes me think you have either refined your opinion about diversity to include only the countries you like (which does not include India and France; also last time I checked there was only 1 first year student from Switzerland) or the diversity stuff was really B/S in your application. So before you point out any single country as rude, do you really think you want to go that way???
Also, the fact that the author, Zachary Wasilew, has actually managed to quantify the "snubbing index", with just over 2 months of education at the most quantitative school appeals to my thought (yeah that's how good GSB is). Anyways, for those who haven't read the article, the author has come up with a rating in which he ranks countries according to their rudeness level - India scores in the 90th percentile in this ranking.
The fact that he has chosen countries and not people motivated me to analyze this in more detail. I think the absolute brilliance with which he has singled out the fact that the people from India are rude and mean SOB's is outstanding. As with all brilliant analysis, I feel compelled to do more follow up work. (Note: I am guessing the author has clubbed all the folks from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka under India. Since people from South Asia can't make out the difference, I bet the author can't. To keep things simple, I will use author's broad "geographical" boundaries)
According to the author, the line barging index is an "inexact science" - now that does come as a surprise to me because I thought quantitative scores were arrived at by detailed quantitative analysis. This makes me think that Zachary is being modest about his quantitative skills.
According to Zachary, LBI is proportional to Speed to front of the line and Number of people passed in line and inversely to the expectation of Reprisal for stepping in front of those who politely believed in system of queues.
So unlike Zachary, I am not a quant jock, so to me if a person has a high LBI index, he/she has to be the first (or among the first) to reach a recruiter and has to pass a bunch of unsuspecting nice people. Now, I am thinking since there are only 3 variables involved, one of the ways a person can rank people in order of rudeness is to assign weights to each of the variables (a linear regression could do that) and then rank everybody attending the presentation based on the linear equation you come up with.
Now if you fall under the 90th percentile it means that 90% of the people in ranked order are less rude than you. Next question - how do you get to the result that India ranked in the 90th percentile? So this means that you rank countries and not people. So if India ranks in the 90th percentile, it means that 90% of the countries are less rude than India. Now even in the metaphysical sense, how is one country more or less rude than another? Maybe Zachary is taking a course that I have not.
However, just like all the follow up work to brilliant analysis, I will follow another, simpler, (and probably un-quantitative quasi-cool analysis that the Zach-ites of the GSB might not like). But here are some facts:
Well-known fact # 1: Rudeness factor Banking Presentations > Rudeness factor Consulting Presentations
Well-known fact # 2: Number of first years pursuing Banking ยป Number of people pursuing consulting
Little-known fact # 3: Number of Indians pursuing consulting > Number of Indian pursuing Banking
Author's premise: India is ruder than 90% of the other nations represented at GSB
Now if we combine fact # 2, fact # 3 and the author's premise, we should be able to conclude that rudeness in the Consulting presentations should be exceeding that in the Banking industry, but this contradicts fact #1. Now this means that either our assumption is wrong or we have our facts wrong? Now we know #1 & #2 can't be wrong (historical data) - so is fact # 3 wrong? Well, I guess not, but this can be easily checked by going to any banking and consulting presentation. So maybe the author's inexact science is flawed? Seems unlikely some may say. So let's do this analysis another way:
In the first and second years, there are about 43 people from India (campus MBA students from India - face-book research). Now, I think this number is low because it does not count those people who are permanent residents or those who are too "cool" to be associated with a developing country. Now, statistics from the South Asia Business group tell us that there are about 55 first-year members in the group. So, to be more credible, I will start with this number.
Now, from another year of experience at GSB, I think about 40% (or 21) of these are money loving, power hungry folks. Assuming 100% of these money-loving folks are rude, (along with the earlier mentioned adjectives), we have 21 rude wannabe Indian bankers.
Now, a typical banking presentation has about 200 attendees. So let's break this according to demographics. The first year profile says,
US citizens - 65% (130 wannabe bankers)
International - 27% (54 wannabe too bankers)
Permanent Residents - 8% (16 wannabe too too bankers)
Out of 150 attendees, let's assume 10% of these (or 20 people) are power hungry, money loving and rude. This number is pretty high since we know that, (Number of rude people at a presentation < Number of recruiters present), or else mayhem would break lose. According to Zach, India ranks in the 90th percentile, US ranks in the 30th percentile, France in the 60th percentile, and Switzerland in the 10th percentile.
Now, let's leave the percentile system for a second. To be ranked among the top quartile, most of the rude ambitious folks need to come from India. Connecting the data points from earlier, we have 20 rude wannabe Bankers at a presentation > 21 possible rude wannabe Bankers from India. Now this is possible only in one of 4 ways:
1) Some rude Indian wannabe bankers miss some presentation (but we know those people are not serious about banking, hence we can rule out this one)
2) Of the possible 21 rude Indian wannabe bankers, only 15 decide to be rude on one particular day
3) There are more than 20 rude wannabe bankers at a presentation OR
4) Less than 40% of Indians are rude - which would bring this number down to 20, but would mean all the rude SOB's were Indians. Now if that were true, in the LBI scoring index, there would be only one country - yours truly India.
Now if any of the above possibilities are true, how do you conclude that India (and not those 20 Indians) is ruder than rest of the world??? I guess inexact science sprinkled with some good quantitative analysis (read seeds of good imagination) does the trick. Is that acceptable at the Mecca of analytical thought?
I guess I have made my point above. I was one of the DSAC application readers last year and every one of the applications I read mentioned how they wanted to come to the GSB because of the "diversity". Zachary - I hope you thought about that as well when you picked schools to apply to. That makes me think you have either refined your opinion about diversity to include only the countries you like (which does not include India and France; also last time I checked there was only 1 first year student from Switzerland) or the diversity stuff was really B/S in your application. So before you point out any single country as rude, do you really think you want to go that way???