Done with the Mid-Terms. That's what kept me away from blogging.
Stats was better, Eco was a disaster. I really liked Economics, whatever was taught so far. Obviously, my best-fit regression line, linking the liking of the subject to doing well in it, was wrong. The relationship does not seem linear to me, and definitely, it's not a positive slope either.
Eco: The objective of this course was to help the student think differently. I wondered at that time, that it was really a tall order. However, two and a half weeks from the start, I think there has been some difference to my way of thinking about things. Supply and demand, profit maximization are some of the more important terms learnt during this course.
Let's say, why do you think airlines food is bad?
Before Eco course happened, I would think, that all these guys were denying us our value for money. Downright disgusting!
Post Eco, I feel that there are certain other considerations to be borne in mind. Considering an ideal situation, Airlines Industry approximates a perfectly competitive market, which means there are "n" other airlines providing the same service - transportation. In such a situation, the price is decided by the market, and both consumers and producers respond to this God. If prices are similar across the board, there is no incentive for the producer to increase price - consumers will go elsewhere, neither to reduce, as they can get as many customers as they want at the current price. No extra person is going to come by price reduction. In such a scenario, the only way to win, is to reduce the underlying fixed and variable costs associated with flights. So, economise whatever you possibly can.
The difference in my thinking is that, I now understand, why airlines serve what they do.

Our stats prof left last week after completing his portion. We've got a new guy for the second half. The first prof was really awesome. Teaching like he was holding a stage and urging us to think like managers. Statistics is all numbers, estimates and so on. But this is not what you do. You decide what statistics to estimate and you interpret the results. While technical taught me the details, Management is all about moving away from them. And, it is interesting.

The students here are photographed four days a week, throughout the year. No, no we are not celebrities, this is the way the institute keeps track of attendance. It's a huge archive...all students, everyday, entire year. Maybe, if one studied those, one could see the changes of maturity over the year. Faces change, and I am sure, the archive could provide proof of that.

I've written quite a lot, by far my longest post.
Take care,
:D