Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Vo kahna sir ka "Get Out From the Class"

In one lecture I was without any reading material and was totally new to the subject. I was prepared to be thrown out of the class but I got a chance. Prof was really cool. He unlike many others understood that throwing a guy out of the class was not a solution. Throughout the lecture, I was busy(for a change) applying my understading of the concepts and got the following " Equation of Learning "

Variables:
LRN = Total Learning one can have in class
PR = Pre reading
MAT = having the material in class
MDEL = Quality of delivery of instructor
I= Individuals (students) ability to comprehend

Relations

Taking PR and MAT as an independent variable and LRN as a dependent variable.
The Equation for class learning will be

LRN = I* PR + b* MAT + c --------------1

In case PR=0 and MAT =0 LRN=c

But in case someone is thrown out of the class

LRN =0

But if he is allowed to sit in the class, in that case

LRN>0,

Here we can introduce 1 more variable
That is MDEL

So LRN becomes

LRN = I*PR + b *MAT + I*MDEL + c -------------------2

Here if PR=0 and MAT =0

It implies LRN = I * MDEL + c

This equation may be true for one time event.

Generally a student is thrown out assuming that second time variable PR and MAT will be 1 and they will contribute positively to the LRN. But other factors are ignored. In this case we need to check whether there is any significant correlation in the LRN and PR/MAT. Prima facie (MDEL * I) seem to be better correlated to the LRN than other variable. One more aspect is important to notice; PR can have limiting effect on I and can limit the total value of I * MDEL.

In such a scenario, expelling someone out of the class may not be the right thing.

2 comments:

Vaibhav Jha said...

Too much...seriously...i read somewhere that MBAs are not gud businessmen becos they tend to capture the real unpredictable world into trends/formulae/mathematical models...here i saw a real example

Boogerworm said...

cool... man. can we put that up on SRIJAN or atleast something similar? Put it in the public folder... it'll be fun