Updated: 3/1/2003; 10:28:07 PM.
Un Film Snob Pour Martiens
An INSEAD MBA Blog
        

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Jack Soll's Quotes of the Day from Applied Statistics

[when introducing regression analysis]  "Next time I'll tell you why it's called 'regression analysis' instead of, for example, 'fitting straight lines'."

[after completing a regression analysis relating everyone's height and weight, and getting an equation that looked like W = -60 + 1.5H]  "If you had a very short person, you would expect him to have negative weight.  You might be in an alternative universe.  Does this bother you?"

[on how to reduce errors when using the above equation to estimate one particular student's weight] "How can we reduce the error of this prediction?  You might account for other variables, like sex. [long pause]  Boy or girl, I mean.  [laughter in the amphi]  You might ask, is he American?  [uproarious laughter in the amphi]"

[on discussing the value of R-squared, a measure of how well a model explains a relationship between two variables]  "So what value of R-squared do you need?  Tough question.  This depends on your field.  In physics, you can't publish unless R-squared is 0.99.  In my field, psychology or economics, if you have R-squared of 0.2, you have a party."

 


7:57:56 PM    comment []

Success.  Last night, I finished the long paper.  It's not even that long, a few thousand words, but it was interesting.  Perhaps I'll post it, but probably not; the ending was terrible because we ran out of time.  Write to me and I'll send it to you if you want a copy; it is titled "Sun Tzu and Machiavelli: A Comparison and Possible Applications".

Also last night, I was invited to dinner at one of the well-known student houses.  There are several such residences, where groups of Insead students live together, that have been passed from year to year, some for decades.  Some are chateaux, some are compounds near chateaux, and some are just wicked cool houses.  The dinner I attended last night falls into that last category.

This house, and I will call it a house because I don't know what else to call it, is located on top of the Loing river.  A huge stone structure, you have to walk on a wooden bridge to get to the front door, over a particularly loud stretch of the river, so loud that you can't comfortably speak near the entrace.  Five students live there and host dinner parties on a regular basis, when they bring in a chef (!) and invite people over to compliment them on how cool their house it.  And it's a fantastically cool structure; if I can find a link to it I'll post it.

Fifteen people sat together on a long, wooden table in a long, fireplace-heated room, eating food cooked for them by a matronly French chef, drinking copious amounts of wine, and having a generally uproarious time.  It was completely ridiculous, and I loved it.  There were even kayaks on the back porch, so you could go kayaking into the river when struck by a sudden fancy.

I've learned that these dinner parties are an essential feature of the Insead social life.  Many of my friends do nothing but eat, drink, and be merry; many others are studying day and night.  I am slowing finding out how to have some balance, spending time with friends, making new ones, and learning from my courses.  It is turning out to be a wonderful, special experience here, and it's only just begun!


7:48:26 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Lucky Goldstar.
 
February 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28  
Jan   Mar


MBA Blogs

Other Blogs

Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.

Subscribe to "Un Film Snob Pour Martiens" in Radio UserLand.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.