Believe it or Not

There are a lot of weird things that happen around the world and television series like Ripley’s believe it or not is a true testimony to what I am talking about. While we were on our Eurotrip (in B-school parlance sometimes also referred to as ‘exchange’) we went to a Ripley’s museum which has one of the most bizarre collection of artifacts ranging from the creative (a robotic monstrosity constructed from a car) to the outright creepy (dramatization of a house vandalized by cyclone and a baby hanging upside down from a tree ‘chill thru the spine!’). But wait, we are not here to discuss Ripleys or its collectibles but something that I happen to see in Barcelona, Spain. We (backpackers zindabad!) were walking down the very famous Les Rambles watching one of the most eclectic group of people selling anything from flowers to birds. The place was possibly the best attraction in Barcelona (unlike most who might think all the Gaudi structures are…some of my friends were very unfortunate to get a glimpse of the gaudy structures first thing in the morning and I am sure they would think otherwise J ). But the most interesting moment came when we reached the Colombus tower (though I must warn you that the tower itself was not the most interesting part) at the end of the street. We spent some 5-6Euros for getting in to the elevator that takes us to the top of what they call the watching tower (it was actually like a bird’s nest!!! Closed on all sides with bird shit all over the window ledges). The place at the top was pretty cramped so much so that no two people can walk past each other without one complaining of some definite fondling. It was the worst expense we incurred the whole of eurotrip only to be compensated for what I saw in the elevator. This has to be one of the weirdest signs one would ever see anywhere in the world. It was a “No Farting” sign. Yes! A “no Farting sign”, who puts a no farting sign in the elevator. I mean what are you telling the people here. “Please control any involuntary emission of gases from your posteriors or you would be reprimanded!”. However in retrospect I wonder why don’t they have more of these signs everywhere in all lifts. Just imagine you are going in a lift which is already jam packed with people and the body odour (good or bad alike) is slowly replacing all the oxygen in the space and suddenly someone farts!!!! It will surely prevent some casualties believe it or not……….

What's in a name!

Was Shakespeare naïve in thinking that the name of a person is not a true indication of his net present value (in true B-school jargon)? Given a certain set of starting similarities- here, the environment of a B-school, statistics, flawed or otherwise, clearly indicate that there is some correlation between the name a person possesses and the type of career path he/she is looking at.

This innocuous yet insightful observation is going to revolutionize the naming industry for ever and throw all the nosey pundits out of jobs and last but not the least, parents are going to thank me for years to come. In retrospect what I am going to propose is not for the faint hearted and has to be absorbed slowly in the quintessential “zor ka jhatka dheere se” style.

If we have a look at the summer placements that happened in 2006 at IIM B we find that a stupendous 110 people got foreign offers of a motley group of 250 odd people. We surely broke some records here. There was a sense of euphoria among the batch and err…..pardon me for the digression but those were good old times. Well coming back, we find an interesting correlation between names and location of placement. Strangely all the Rohits of the world got foreign locations so did all the Shrutis of the world. The table below would give you some sense of what I am talking about here.

The propensity to attain nirvana during summer internships be measured by the f_x (Ma, I am going phoren) factor. This can be calculated by a simple equation:

f_x(Name)= N(Number of foreign internships, Name)/N(Name)

For the purposes of this study, a sample of 253 students were chosen. They then underwent 5 days of chaos to emerge as nothing but nameless (not really) statistics for this paper.

The f_x factor of the batch is found out to be 0.44. This implies that this threshold value must be crossed in order for the name to have any value in the marriage market.

A second test was also run on common surnames in order to provide the best name that you can ever choose for a new-born baby. As you can see, unlike most papers, this one might actually prove useful later in life.

The findings for the first name test are summarized (not really) below. Some clarifications are appended as footnotes as applicable.

Name	fx= Frequency of phoren internships	Total number of occurrences	Locations
Abhay	1	2	London, Germany
Abhishek	0.5	6	Hong Kong
Akash	0	2	India
Amit*[1]	0.60	5	New York
Ashwin**[2]	0.67	3	New York
Ankit	1	3	Hong Kong, London
Ayush*	1	2	Hong Kong, London
Deepak	1	2	London, Hong Kong
Gaurav	1	2	London, Germany
Gautam*	0.67	3	London, New York
Karthik*	0.5	4	Singapore, Hong Kong
Kiran#[3]	0.5	2	Hong Kong
Manoj	0	2	100% fill rate- ICICI Bank
Mohit	0.33	3	Texas
Neha	0.5	2	Singapore
Prasanna**	0	2	India
Praveen	0.5	2	Hong Kong
Prasun	0.5	2	London
Rahul	0.33	3	New York
Rohit	1	3	Hong Kong, Tokyo, London
Rajesh	0	3	India
Sandeep	0	4	India
Saurabh	0.5	2	Czech Republic
Soumya**	0.33	3	Germany
Shruti	1	3	New York, Benelux
Sumit	0.75	2	New York, India/Hong Kong
Uday*	0.33	3	London/New York
Varun	1	2	Singapore, Hong Kong
Vineet	0.5	2	London/New York
Vivek	0.5	2	London
Yashaswi#	0.5	2	New York

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[1] *Includes derivatives of the name with alternate spellings and different endings

[2] **Includes the name as a prefix or suffix only in the first name. Both male and female specimens included

[3] ^#One specimen left out/added due to ‘used name’ convention

This test was also run on some common last names. The summarization of THESE results are given below:

Last Name	fx= Frequency of phoren internships	Total number of occurrences	Locations
Agarwal*	0.67	6	Hong Kong, Germany
Arya	0.50	2	New York
Bansal	0.50	2	London
Behera	0.50	2	Germany
Chowdhuri*	1	2	Hong Kong
Daga	0.5	2	London
Goyal*	0.33	3	Singapore
Gupta	0.88	9	London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore
Hari##	1	2	Singapore, London
Jain	1	3	London, New York
Krishna##	0.30	9	Singapore, Hong Kong, London
Kumar##[1]	0.43	14	Germany, New York, Singapore, Texas
Mohan##	0.67	3	Singapore, Germany
Prakash	0.67	3	New York, London
Rao	0	2	India
Sharma	0.66	3	London, New York
Singh##	0.66	3	Singapore
Sinha	0.67	3	Hong Kong, London

Table 2: Summary of Last Name Conventions

Purists might say that the sample set is too small. To this contention, the author would like to point out that even if the statistics mean nothing… like most statistics are, these numbers are at least interesting!

Further analysis shows that if you are Gaurav Jain or Amit Gupta, you have a high probability of ending up in London or New York (though this is a rather circular argument). Similarly, women, if you want your child to achieve good things in life, like being among the top b-schools in the country but also chalking out an interesting “phoren location” based career, marry a Gupta. Evidently, they do quite well for themselves.

Alternatively, you can just name your child Kenny Hsieh and teach him Chinese. Whichever works for you.

Going one step further though the sample set involved in the above survey who might blame their parents for the lack of imagination they should rather thank their parents.

So next time there is a naming ceremony happening anywhere you know what names to suggest and with the statistics and “data” to back you up you will surely make the right choice.

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[1] ^## Includes the name as a prefix or suffix in the last name, but not as a middle or given name.

P.S. Sorry for putting this a little late but a certain B-(stung at the wrong place) aka shrutz aka co-author has been instrumental in collecting invaluable data for this research and also making amends to this article thus making it a masterpiece :) :: from co-author phirahuadimag