Misinterpreting is fun

Misinterpreting is fun. It is profitable. And it is hugely popular. And that's till the game becomes serious. People, in general, assume that Finance is maths. And they are wrong, 100% wrong. This is true only for accounting, and that too only theoretically. The first thing that they teach anyone is that Finance is both an art and a science. The science part deals with the models, formulae, and other 'scientific' stuff. The art part deals with the interpretation and application of this scientific part. And that's where all the science goes to hell, as people construe every damn thing in the way they want to, and forget every damned assumption that was taken into consideration when the formula or theory was originally conceptualised. The science part from thereon plays only one role - to make the sayings of these 'soothsayers' erudite enough for the 'vernacular folk' to treat them as demigods, if not gods.

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Faceboo-king

Where did this thought come from? Well, from Facebook-ing. For the past some time I've been observing how the 'Compare People' application and some of the other applications work. And, well they are intentionally misinterpreting the inputs of the people to cook up stuff that would seem nice to people. Or, well, at least Genuine. So what do they do? Well, quite simple. Here's an example from Compare People. They ask you to do a bipartite comparison. And based on the number of wins that you have, in comparison to the number of wins that your friends have, you are assigned a rank on each parameter. But where's the catch? Well, here are some points:

First, it takes the number of wins and not the percentage. So suppose all of the friends who have compared you on some parameter have voted for you, say intelligence. All your friends think that you are intelligent. You've got 100% of the votes but only 7. On the other hand we have someone who has got 50% of the votes, but 10. That person will get a higher ranking. It is as stupid as it sounds.

Second, the sample size is just too small in most of the cases. Just 1 vote is enough for you to be ranked. That's it. Yes, one friend says that you are good or bad at some parameter and you get a rank. The lowest rank that I have is 140th on some parameter, that's with a friend list around 350. I've got a 100% negative (1 vote) on that parameter, yet I am better than more than 200 of my friends.

Third, the comparisons we are asked to make in some of the cases are ridiculously insane. For ex: I was once asked to compare a rather handsome male friend of mine with a less than average looking female friend. The question was : "Whom would you prefer to sleep with?"(This isn't verbatim). Under no conditions am I going to sleep with the male friend. Well, actually, there is one condition - if I convert to the third gender sometime in the future. So the answer is obvious. And that female friend would jump with joy for receiving that vote. I click on Skip most of the time.

There are many more points but I'll end this list with this one. The most insane part is that you have to compare your friends with people whom you don't know(usually advertisements of other applications). Now, what you have is a sexy looking model, whom you don't know, and a normal Girl Next Door, who is your friend, and you are asked to compare them on, usually, beauty or sexiness. I guess, I don't need to explain any further what happens.

So, ultimately, if you have a certain ranking. It does not depend on what you are at all. It depends more on how many of your friends are highly active on Facebook than anything else.

And this happens all the time. On every site, almost every quiz that you take. MISINTERPRETING IS that POPULAR.

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It was during my graduation when I studied marketing research for the first time. And that was the same time when newspapers like HT city used to carry all kinds of surveys about lifestyle - all sensational stuff. The kind that adds to the coffers of the publication.

There was one I remember distinctly. It was about Sex and Teens- Changing Sexual preferences, Sexual habits etc. The headline, the font size of which was much bigger than usual, announced that x percentage of girls in India lose their virginity by the time they cross their teens.

It did not mention anything about where the survey was conducted and stuff- important information to analyse the validity of the results. It mentioned the sample size - 139. That number is less than the number of cities in India, well I should be saying a miniscule fraction of the number of cities in India. And knowing the way journalists, in general, work these days I am sure of a few things. One, the intention was not to get to what the situation is but to get sensational results, even the questions I'm pretty sure would have been framed in a manner which would increase the probability of getting sensational results. That survey was conducted in 1 or at most 2 of the high-end private schools in the National Capital Region - well, let me put it as Central/South Delhi. And add to that it wouldn't be surprising if they had actually surveyed around 250 odd students and kept only the 'interesting' ones.

Nevertheless, the entire article was fun to read. I am in love with sensational stuff. So are so many people around me. And that is why the newspaper sells and that why MISINTERPRETING IS PROFITABLE.

During graduation one of my friends was doing a project on the public awareness of something. He conducted a survey. The results that he was getting were not good enough for him to reach any 'interesting' conclusion. So, he asked for my help. And the kind-hearted soul that I am, how could I refuse. "What result would you like to show?", I asked him. "It would be ideal if...", he replied, Based on his response, I told him 3 different ways of getting to that result. The easiest and safest one was the last thing that I quoted above - keep only those questionnaires which justify your stand, and some in-the-middle ones, and a very small percentage of the 'negative' ones.

It's that easy... its fun. What is even more fun is to read those surveys and all that are printed in the newspapers and analyse them and 'not find a mistake'. Trust me, its challenging. And I am just someone with a little bit of interest in Researching. The experts, I am sure, would find it impossible to 'not find a mistake.' And that is why MISINTERPRETING IS FUN.

Misinterpretation is done by almost everyone and almost all the time. The above was just one aspect of that. One can write tomes and tomes on misinterpretation, given the time and resources. But this is enough for now!

PS:

1. I am not someone who hates Facebook or the applications that it has. I enjoy them so much, how can I.
2. I am not trying to say that even a single girl more than the percentage quoted are in fact virgins.
3. The project was only for academic purposes. It was boring and useless. It deserved to be fudged. I have no clue why my friend worked so hard on it.

Female Psyche!

This post has been lying in my Laptop for some time now. I've even forgotten what the thought was in its entirety. All this thanks to the Placements! Anyway, here's whatever I had written down:

'Girls think like this, girls think like that'... You, I'm sure, just like me, have been hearing this since ever. The reasons often quoted are biological/genetic in nature. The most important reasons for the development of a human's psyche - male/female, white/black, king/beggar is the Environment which is almost always ignored. Why's that? Well, pretty simple. If you'd say that a person around you is bad and the reason why he's bad is the environment - you'd be pointing a finger at yourself, well that is because you are a part of the environment. And would you want to point a finger at yourself? The answer is NOOOOOOOOOO.....

It's quite simple - if there is a person around you who has developed a certain mindset, mentality, perspective... whatever word you want to use for it... (even though all these words are technically different - very different, for a layman they are all the same) then, it has a lot to do with the way you behave with that person, and all the other people around that person behave with him/her.