Session 1 Updates

Hi all,

Session 1 got done yesterday. Was heartening to see a healthy dose of engagement and response from the class.

This blog post is regarding the following points:

1. Surveys for data collection *today*:

Below is the link to two short online surveys which shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes by my reckoning.

Social Network data collection for Section A students

Social network data collection for section B students

Text Data inputs for students from both sections

I need you to fill up this survey today itself, by 8 am tomorrow latest. This gives me enough time to collect the data and use it in class for sessions 4 (text analytics) and session 5 (Social network measurement and analysis).

By the way, completing the above 2 surveys has grade credit and will be considered as part of your class participation (CP) grade.

2. Links for some topics we covered in Session 1:

Here are some links for some of the concepts we studied in session 1. These are optional readings and you may cover them at leisure. They're basically to help understanding for those folks who may have felt the coverage in class was not detailed enough on certain topics.

This is a Wikipedia link to Quantitative psychology as a subject area. It provides a nice, concise and precise introduction to the area in general and has a good number of downstream links that you can pick up on as and when necessary.

This is the Wiki entry to Scaling techniques in general in the social sciences. As you can see the comparative versus noncomparative dichotomy comes in early on here. More links to detaiuled topics are also available.

This is the wiki entry to psychometrics as a discipline. I thought it a tad too inclined towards educational testing but still, worth a read perhaps, for those interested.

Recall that in reading 1 in session 1 we could vaguely discern elements of segmentation analysis (second paragraph) as well as a elements of affinity analysis (last paragraph). A conceptual introduction to these terms can be found online as well - for instance, here for market segmentation, for cluster analysis and for affinity analysis in retail analytics.

And of course, there's always google available to produce reports and summaries at varying levels of detail on any subject under the sun.

3. Homework Group assignment for Session 1:

There will be a homework assignment (group submission) for session 1. The idea is to give you a few business articles to read and then formulate the business problem (D.P. and R.O.) for each of them.

I will give this in a separate post. In any case, the deadline for this will be between now and your return to campus for the second half of term 1.

4. Group Formation:

That reminds me, pls form teams of 4 people, and one person (as team representative) and email the Academic associate for the class Mr. Krishna Pusuluri the names and ISB IDs of the team members with a Cc to the other members of the team.

If for any reason, you are unable to form a team or find team members, pls let me know and I will assign you to a team.

5. In case you feel, addressing me as 'sir' or 'prof' is too stuffy and formal, then pls feel free to call me 'Sudhir'. Its perfectly OK by me. That's it for today. See you in class, soon.

Sudhir