Freakonomics @ NIT Trichy

Freakonomics
Don't let the title freak you out. I am sure lot of folks who have this subject have panned it as too mathematical and boring. Here is an award winning economist (Steven Levitt) who says the same, but shows us how economics can be made fun especially when applied on our day to day lives. The way he adds two plus two for issues brings out this whole new angle to life and everything we live for. He proves that the reason for the drop in crime rates in USA were because of a woman who fought for legalized abortion 20 years earlier, or how the Klu Klux Klan was brought down by a cartoon character, or what is safer- a gun in the house or the swimming pool. Numerous such weird yet trivial issues are explained in layman's terms and the way he uses data to his advantage is worth noting. Even if you aren't a big fan of data interpretation, this book makes for light reading and throws in a new perspective to looking at things. The book's only weak point is its small, leaving you thirsty for more.

More reviews here, here and here . The bottomline is they all say its a nice read :)

Freakonomics @ NITT

The best part about Freakonomics is that it is relevant to common man- that's you and me. So I decided to undertake an experiment into using Freakonomics tools to answer random questions regarding NITT.

There are two types of humans - those who eat to live and those who live to eat. Thanks to our messes, most of us have ended up in the former category. A major respite to this has been our gate culture thanks to the handful of dhabas.

As girls grow smarter (solely measured in terms of AIEEE numbers), these dhabas are dipping into red. The average intake of "girls" has increased in the past couple of years. These days, the fairer sex has grown bolder as they eat out at Dhaba on a regular basis, once thought to be solely a masculine domain. No doubt, this wind of change has dragged along a larger population of the male species and improved sales margins for our roadside annas (which is why the new price hike has been halted for the moment). But here lies the catch.

Dhaba clientele can be broken up into the usual male crowd that comes in no matter what and keeps the dhaba running. The profit percentages come from the new type of clientele i.e influenced by girls. Groups of girls are a commonplace at gate these days, so are couples and guys who have to stick along till 9 PM thanks to their commitments with girls in various aspects and hence are forced to eat at gate. As the skewed ratio reduces and coupling percentages (Fig. 1) go higher, there are more incidents that are waking up the moral guardians of this campus and in their hand; they have the most potent weapon of them all :- roll call. Hence if the roll call is shifted to eight or earlier, girls are totally ruled out at the gate, so are the couples. With roll call being at eight, all extra curricular activities would have a unanimous break at eight PM, allowing number of guys to make it to the mess at an appropriate time and not be left over with leftovers.

Figure 1

What's NITT without its cows? Did you know increase in number of cancelled classes is helping accelerate global warming? 10:10 break, midnight coffee breaks, late breakfasts - are various reasons why people can be found hounding BRU, Nescafe and similar outlets. But along with these come the unscheduled cancelled classes that leave students in a hitch of how to pass time till the next class. In 7 out of 10 situations, people found BRU to be the closest and cheapest place to be (data collected before BRU had contractual problems). We all thank the cows for being lovely garbage collectors as they eat every bit of paper, Styrofoam cups and what not in hope of grabbing something edible. But most of this is junk and when junk goes, it has to come out. With more junk getting in, more number of times junk has to get out forming minefields for humans but innocuously hiding a far greater danger. Due to anaerobic organisms such as Escherichia coli and methanogenic archaea, an average cow emits 600 litres of Methane per day! Thanks to the junk we give them, our NITT cows donate a few more litres each. As a greenhouse gas, the amount of heat methane can retain is 72 times that of same mass of Carbon Dioxide. Hence assuming 7 departments in CLC with 3 batches and each one has just one class cancelled in a week (on a lower side), and just 5 people grab something, and assuming each piece of junk to be of just 25g, you are generating 11 kilos of junk gobbled up by the cows each month. No doubt a small percentage when one considers the amount of junk we create due to other mentioned reasons but a staggering amount indeed.

If the above concepts seemed too abstract, let's take a simpler one where the facts just stare out at us. A trend you all must have noticed - the consistency of power cuts during cycle tests and semesters. The peak load estimated for the college is accounting for all fans and lights switched on plus 20 odd computers per hostel. Thanks to the proliferation of gadgets like coolers and refrigerators, we already are taxing these limits. Based on our sample data, 99% of the junta stayed back in hostels during exam time since extra curricular activities become zilch and the Chennai junta known to run home every weekend decides otherwise. Hence the entire hostel turned into a Las Vegas is just the tip. Leave alone the students who leave their computers on 24x7 throughout the year, based on studies conducted in Garnet hostel and normalizing this data for other hostels, an interesting pattern was noticed. There was a 100% increase in the activity of the non regular user who downloaded more and stayed live longer pushing our computer count by another 35 odd people (in final year hostels). The situation worsens with extremities of weather with coolers coming into play in summer and a larger number of "vetti" people who finally have the time to take a bath - a hot one.

Thats Freakonomics @ NITT for you and hats off to Mr. Steven Levitt for his creativity and out of the box thinking.

This piece will be published shortly as my guest contribution to Entrepeneurship Cell of NIT Trichy's magazine called Paisa Inc.