A Journalistic Faux Pas, Internet style.

Journalists make every effort to report news and information correctly. However, once in a while, mistakes happen.

An example is today's on CNN.com.

The front page provides the title "Apple downgrades Tim Cook". You wonder why Apple downgraded Tim Cook. When you click on the link, however, you are taken to another web page where the title is "Apple employees downgrade Tim Cook".

Big difference.

Apple as a corporate entity is different from its constituent employees although, in many cases, the employees have a say in what Apple, the corporate entity, does or says.

In this particular case, it is a subset of Apple employees that subscribe to Glassdoor.com that have downgraded Tim Cook, and I quote:

Apple employees who reviewed their CEO on Glassdoor.com say they still like Tim Cook -- just less than they liked him last year.

I'll bet that most people would have clicked on the link based on the short title on CNN.com's front page.

Is this responsible Internet journalism? Of generating more clicks to a page?

Who won in the 2013 US Presidential Election?

Of course, we all know that President Obama was reelected to the 2013 White house with a 303-206 majority in electoral votes last week. But, the real win is for two important constituencies:

1. Education
2. Economy (Middle class)

Education. The advent of China and India as potential economic forces in the world economy needs to be taken note of. The 21st century belongs to a properly educated workforce. Not merely in overall education emphasizing liberal arts, etc., but one that provides proper grounding in technology too. President Obama's passion towards this cause is unmistakable. Did you see such passion in the GOP camp?

Economy (The middle class). The backbone of any economy is a vibrant middle class. Particularly when the entire world is getting adjusted to a different 'economic center of gravity' than just the 'West', with both the US and the Western Europe in economic struggle, it takes some proactive effort to strengthen the middle class than a mere 'hope' that a trickle down economics is sufficient. Such trickle down thinking is tantamount to a mistaken application of the dictum 'God will take care of you'. God will take care of you, provided you do your efforts. The 'you' we are talking about is any Government, and every Government must assess what is needed to be done and enable policies to make those thing happen (and no more). 

Didn't we all learn in our childhood that God Helps Those Who Help Themselves? 

Let us hope that America has learnt its lesson and our political leaders will work in unison by removing the gridlock in Washington.

As Oscar award winner A R Rahman tweeted, after President Obama's reelection, Jai Ho:

Let there be victory to Education and the Economy.

A Simplistic Model of Performing Earned Value Management (EVM) in a Project.

Most discussions on Earned Value Management (EVM) will tell us to compute planned values, PV(t), at the time of planning the project, and assess Earned Values, EV(t), as we make progress over time. This is a very easy and effective way of assessing how the project is performing with respect to time, i.e., schedule.

The problem, in many cases, is that Planned Value (PV) cannot realistically be computed at all. In a project that is expected to take about 18 months to complete, with an average of 25 engineers on the project throughout, and the number of engineers changing over time, we can only begin to compute the planned value as time progresses.

A simplistic model, that I realized was possible during a discussion with my fellow colleague Richard Wheeler, is what is presented here, as an example. No need to worry about actual engineers involved, etc., by making the following, very realistic, assumptions [A click on the graph will open it in its own tab/window]:

1. Planned Value is 0 at the beginning of the project. (7/1/2010)
2. Planned Value is 2 at the planned end of the project. (12/31/2011). This is also the Budget at Completion (BAC). (The choice of 2 for PV is only to separate the graphs of EV and SPI in the same presentation).
3. An S-curve is fitted between the beginning and the end of the project. I have used a very simple Excel model of an S-curve in this example; your environment might be better served by a different model suited for your project's environment.
4. For each of the interim milestones, 4 in the example, there is an associated PV, based on elapsed time. (Milestone 5, M5, is the completion of the project).
5. When a certain milestone is reached in actual execution, the EV(t) is considered to be the PV at the milestone.
6. When M3 is reached in actual execution, any schedule variance at that time, SV(t), EV(t) - PV(t), is assumed to persist until M4 is reached.
7. Beyond M4, I have assumed a linear improvement in EV(t) until M5 is reached.

Of course, one limitation of this simplistic model is that actual costs are not considered; even then, it can be a useful model in some project situations.

Google Fiber, when are you coming to our town?

This blog post is an alternative, easier-to-follow, representation of an article on Mashable.com, How Does Your Internet Service Stack up to Google Fiber?

Property	AT&T	Comcast	Google	Time-Warner	Verizon
Name	Max Turbo Internet and U-verse U450 TV	Xfinity Extreme 105 Internet and Digital Premier TV	Gigabit + Fiber TV	Signature Home Package	FiOS 300 and Ultimate HD
Price/mo	$188	$180	$120	$199	$318
Internet access speed	24 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up	105 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	1000 Mbit/s down, 1000 Mbit/s up	105 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	300 Mbit/s down, 65 Mbit/s up
Monthly Data Cap	250 GB	300 GB	Infinite	60 GB	Infinite
Channels	430, incl. Cinemax, HBO	> 300, incl. AMC, ESPN, HBO, Showtime	162, incl. Showtime	350; premium extra	380, incl. ESPN, NFL RedZone, Showtime
DVRs, Recording	1, 4	1, 2	1, 8	1, 2	1, 2
DVR - hrs	65 HD	60 HD	500 HD	150 HD	60 HD
Availability	22 states	39 states, & Washington, DC	Kansas City, KS & Kansas City, MO	29 states	12 states, & Washington, DC

It should be clear that, for Internet-centric usage, Google Fiber is the best bang for the buck. Yes, their package includes only 162 channels but, if you observe your own channel usage, you may discover that you probably only use a dozen or two channels anyhow.

Why even 162?

Google Fiber, when are you coming to our town? Does 'Bay Area' ring a bell?

Roger Federer, No.7, No. 17, No. 1.

In a recent article on ESPN.com, on Federer's latest Wimbledon conquest, the first sentence is:

"No. 7, No. 17, No. 1."

Gets you thinking on how well he has done from other points of view. I have given here a simple exercise of determining how well some of these players have done since their 1st Grand Slam win, and how well they may perform in the future. (1st Grand Slam win identifies, in a way, a certain maturity needed for such wins).

Today

I have chosen today's top three Grand Slam winners — namely Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic —, and have added Pete Sampras to this mix.

Player	First Grand Slam Win	Last Grand Slam (i.e., Retirement)	Tournaments the Player [could have] Played through now (or Retirement)	Grand Slam Wins	% Success
Roger Federer	Wimbledon 2003	N/A	2 + 32 + 3 = 37	17	17/37 = 0.459
Pete Sampras	US 1990	US 2002	1 + 48 = 49	14	14/49 = 0.286
Rafael Nadal	French 2005	N/A	3 + 24 + 3 = 30	11	11/30 = 0.367
Novak Djokovic	Australian 2008	N/A	4 + 12 + 3 = 19	5	5/19 = 0.263

Tomorrow

The foregoing table seems to suggest that, if Federer competes for 3 more years, for approximately as many tournaments as Sampras did, there is a good chance that he will win 3*4*0.459, or 5 more, tournaments. Federer will be 34 years old in 2015. In other words, it may be reasonable to expect that his tally of Grand Slam wins will equal 20, i.e., only 3 more and not 5 more, when he retires.

If we extrapolate Nadal's current performance into his 34 years, i.e., for 8 more years, he is likely to have won 8*4*0.367, or 11 more or a total of 22, tournaments. Thus, he might be able to meet 20 Grand Slam wins too. However, given his playing style of utilizing more energy than, say, a more fluid game would use, it is unclear that Nadal will play into his 34 years.

If we extrapolate Djokovic's current performance into his 34 years, i.e., for 9 more years, he is likely to have won 9*4*0.263, or 9 more, tournaments. Thus, he might be able to meet 14 Grand Slam wins, equaling Sampras' record.

Of course, it remains to be seen how the future will unfold.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose ... Caveat Emptor.

In the recent Facebook IPO debacle, the role that Morgan Stanley and other underwriters have played is a curious one. (See Morgan Stanley made money on Facebook share drop).

As a routine procedure, it seems that the underwriters typically get to buy an additional number of shares from the company offering stock to the public.

"Investment bankers typically sell 15% more shares in an IPO than they actually have. ... Included in every IPO deal is an agreement that gives underwriters the ability to buy more stock from the company at a slight discount to the IPO price. So if the price rises after the offering, the underwriters can buy the shares from the company that they have promised to other investors, but don't actually have, and book a small profit. ... In effect, the underwriters were short the stock. ..."

So far, so good. Underwriters, in effect, have a call option on the stock.

However, in the case of the Facebook IPO, the stock tanked on the 2nd and 3rd days, ending below the IPO price. So, what did Morgan Stanley do? It bought shares from the open market, and not from Facebook, and sold them at the IPO price to investors — many of them retail — at the IPO price and, of course, pocketed the difference.

Thus, whether or not Facebook stock rose or fell after the opening on IPO day, Morgan Stanley and other underwriters were already set to make money. Beautiful! The underwriters could not lose either way.

This episode reminds me of "Heads I win, Tails you lose." The underwriters, it seems, get to play this game.

Is this fair capitalism? Caveat Emptor.

Choice of Commencement Speakers.

WISHING ALL GRADUATES EVERYWHERE

The choice of a commencement speaker in American Universities is based quite frequently on worldly accomplishments, rather than being based solely on formal, university-centric, accomplishments. It is as it should be: Even the purpose of formal education is to assist the graduates in helping the world along anyway.

Years ago, we heard Steve Jobs giving a moving commencement speech for Stanford students in 2005. The latest example in 2012: Nipun Mehta, Founder Of Service Space, Delivers Inspiring Graduation Speech To Students At The University Of Pennsylvania. Neither of these have earned PhDs, but both have exhibited a lot of unconventional thinking.









Some additional googling takes us to an interesting TEDx talk by Nipun Mehta on YouTube: TEDxBerkeley - Nipun Mehta - Designing For Generosity.

If you, as a reader, is a recent graduate, I hope this blog post will help you derive inspiration from these two.

Odds of Winning a Silicon Valley Jackpot.

The recently announced acquisition of Instagram by Facebook has evoked an article with this title:

$1 Billion Start-Up Jackpot: The Behind-The-Scenes Winners At Instagram. 

Clearly, some form of a product that appeals to the billions of netizens is the prerequisite for such a jackpot.

However, here's a little tongue-in-cheek way of analyzing for the odds.

Now, if you are an engineer with all the right personal ingredients to create a startup, you'd do well to consider the following facts:

1. The odds of someone's winning MEGA Millions jackpot, which reached recently as high as $640 million, is 1 in 176 million, according to California Lottery web site.
2. The odds of someone's winning the smaller SuperLotto Plus jackpot is 1 in 41 million, also according to California Lottery web site.
3. The San Francisco Bay Area, of which Silicon Valley is a part, would rank first [in the United States] with 387,000 high-tech jobs.

Now, what are the odds of an engineer's succeeding in Silicon Valley? Consider this:

If the general odds of meeting another engineer with complementary characteristics is 1 in 10 million¹, the availability of a pool of 387,000 of them makes the probability of 1 among those to be your startup partner to be 0.0387, or 1 in 25. If you don't want to admit that all of the Bay Area's 387,000 can be Mark Zuckerbergs², you can narrow the field to Google alumni, Facebook alumni, etc. to, let us say, 10,000. Finding your entrepreneurial partner from among these 10,000, you get the odds of 1 in 1,000. Further, if you feel that you can only really pick one from a very small pool of an elite 100 in Silicon Valley, then the odds turn into 100/10,000,000, or 1 in 100,000.

While the foregoing is a highly simplified model of how one goes about creating startups, one thing is certainly clear:

As a brilliant engineer, you have good odds of finding an entrepreneurial partner to succeed in Silicon Valley.

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¹According to the 2010 census, Bay Area population is considered to be 7,150,739.

²You can substitute your favorite entrepreneur here, e.g., Google CEO Larry Page, Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff, ...