Leadership explained from the greatest cricketer

Rahul Dravid said this at the Bradman Oration. It stuck with me...

One of the things, Bradman said has stayed in my mind. That the finest of athletes had, along with skill, a few more essential qualities: to conduct their life with dignity, with integrity, with courage and modesty. All this he believed, were totally compatible with pride, ambition, determination and competitiveness. 

Indian cricket - highs and lows

Many of my friends and family members ask me how I continue to follow Indian cricket when we are doing so bad (whitewash in Test Cricket in England in late 2011 and now in Australia (well almost there))...


My answer is that there are ups and downs in sports and my love for the team and the sport isn't based on convenience, it isn't based on my team doing well all the time. Sometimes we do well (hey, we just won the World Cup 9 months ago and were #1 Test team just a few months ago) and sometimes we don't (pathetic test cricket performance recently).

I am a fan of Indian cricket. I don't give up. I won't give up my faith, my love for the team, my love for the sport, my RELIGION.

I just hope that we get through this phase without much pain and get back up and running... Go India!

Behavioral research

I'm at the O'Reilly's Strata conference in NYC, where a NYU professor shared his research on consumer purchasing behavior. He asserts that 'What people "say" is different from what they actually "do"', so he recommends conducting behavioral studies by measuring what people "do", not what they "say". 

He used camera buying from Amazon as an example, where Zoom is talked about a lot as a feature but has lower impact on purchasing behavior. Whereas Battery Life and Megapixels are talked about less but have higher impact on purchasing behavior. 

Very interesting. 

We often conduct such analysis using surveys in enterprises. To do what he suggests will be more accurate but will cost more... it is much more costly to follow what people "do".

Looking to hire data scientists

We are a global management consulting firm and are looking for data scientists in our team in New York/Washington DC and Gurgaon/Chennai (India). There are full-time and internship (New York) opportunities. There are multiple positions including developing complex models in healthcare, pricing and optimization. If interested, drop me an email at prasoonsharma at gmail dot com.

Position specifications

- Public contributions (projects, plugins, blogs, open source etc.) on MATLAB, SAS, R, SPSS, Stata a plus

- Significant experience in economic and/or scientific programming. Ideally, experience in popular statistical softwares like MATLAB, SAS, R, SPSS, Stata

- Ability to use, analyze and visualize large data sets

- Demonstrated ability for conceptual analytics including translating design considerations into programmed code

- B.A. required, advanced degree preferred (M.A. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Applied Science, Engineering, Economics, Statistics or similar)

Position responsibilities

Running and developing complex healthcare models; e.g., behavioral simulation. Specific responsibilities include:

- Maintaining and developing model and other analytic assets

- Driving individual and team problem solving regarding model architecture and continued development of model and related analytic assets (e.g., ability to independently develop hypotheses, approaches and solutions to development objectives)

- Conducting research and analyzing existing data sources to derive solutions and analyses for model development including complex, multi-variate analytical analyses

- Overseeing and writing communication materials supporting analytic materials, including communication decks for clients and for client teams

- Rigorously reviewing and testing of all programmed code to ensure accuracy/veracity of toolkit development

- Working with teams to understand, guide and refine client teams requests

- Developing and maintaining work plans etc.

A cricketer is born

Rahul Dravid - a legend in Test Cricket

Rahul Dravid is a fantastic cricketer, and a role model for younger generation - focused, hardworking and humble.

Dravid recently became the 2nd highest scorer in Test Cricket (Sachin Tendulkar is the leading scorer). His contribution to Indian cricket is enormous and his nickname, "The Wall", is a testimony to his concentration, skill and will that has given India tremendous success in Test cricket. 

Dravid isn't worshiped in India like Tendulkar. He has played his cricket under Tendulkar's shadow. This isn't because his skill, will or contribution to Indian success is second to anyone. Its just that he lives in the same era as another great cricketer - Tendulkar.

Indian test cricket will never be the same when Dravid retires.

Learning SAS

I want to learn the heavy-weight of Statistical softwares - SAS. It seems like the default choice for high-end statistics and I want to understand why.

I'm working in the healthcare practice in our firm and want to analyze claims and credit data (Terabytes, 50M+ records). Traditional ways (SQL) are limiting and desktop statistical softwares like R and Stata aren't suitable for such large data analysis. Other contenders (Matlab) don't seem to be in the same league.

So, its time to take a deep dive into SAS.

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I'm looking for some advice to create a learning plan...

Good books

• I like learning by examples and found this on Amazon - Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer's Guide by Ronald P. Cody)
• I know some R, so this might be interesting - SAS and R: Data Management, Statistical Analysis, and Graphics by Ken Kleinman and Nicholas J. Horton
• Others?

Good tutorials

• I like video tutorials with examples e.g Statistics202.
• I also like tutorials from a programmer's perspective better
• Anything for SAS out there?

Good blogs

• Anything like R-Bloggers out there for SAS?

Experts

• Will start exploring this. If you know of someone, please let me know. 

Good training courses in New York area

• Preferably not the ones run by the company themselves. I'm looking for SAS experts who can run hands-on classes

SAS interest groups in New York area

• I learn well in a study group. Any meetups?