Quriosity Volume 09 Issue 08

How analytics form an essence in start ups

Tableau – Understanding its basic application

Akshay Venkatesh (B-1981)

QURIOSITY

VOLUME 09 ISSUE 08

AUGUST 2018 MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF QUANTINUUM

– The quant & analytics committee @ SIMSR

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Editor’s Note Welcome to the latest issue of Quriosity, the monthly newsletter of Quantinuum!

Quantinuum, the Quant and Analytics committee of KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research aims to empower students and professionals alike to organize and understand numbers and, in turn, to make good and rational decisions as future managers. The newsletter published monthly consists of articles which will enrich the young minds by informing about the contributions made in the field of Quants, Analytics, and mathematics. The objective of Quriosity is to publish up-to-date articles on data analytics, alongside relevant and insightful news. This way the magazine aspires to be vibrant, engaging and accessible, and at the same time integrative.

This issue includes cover story on how analytics form an essence in start-ups and a sub-article on Tableau application.

We also highlight the contributions of a quantguru – Akshay Venkatesh (B-1981). Curiosity updates inform about developments in space exploration in India as well as around the world. The issue also features other interesting quant fun articles and quant digest. We have also highlighted the internship experience of Anjali Tiwari in GEP. If you wish to submit articles or news items, either individually or collaboratively, you are welcome to write to us at quriosity.quantinuum@gmail.com Thank you and Happy Reading!

Quriosity Editorial Team Quantinuum@SIMSR Mentor:

Editorial Team:

Prof. N.S.Nilakantan (+919820680741) Email – nilakantan@somaiya.edu

VVNS Anudeep (+919441201685) Khushbu Mehta (+919930158610) Kapil Gupta (+917727936906) Aditya Sharma (+918302525599) Samoshri Mitra (+918697440265) Dropad Saxena (+919582337930) Akshay Nagpal (+918800114925)

Team Leaders: Purav Shah (+917708521382) VVNS Anudeep (+919441201685) Yatharth Jaiswal (+919969698361)

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Contents TOPIC

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Cover Story How analytics form an essence in start ups

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by Samoshri Mitra

Sub-article Tableau – Understanding its basic

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application

by Shubham Thakur

Quant Guru – Akshay Venkatesh (1981)

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by Dropad Saxena

Quant Curiosity Update

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by Khushbu Mehta

News Digest

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by Khushbu Mehta

Faculty Corner

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by VVNS Anudeep

Internship Diaries

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By Anjali Tiwari

Quant Fun

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by Khushbu Mehta

Quant Connect

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Quant Cover Story How analytics form an essence in start ups

According to the CEO of one of the leading e-commerce floral companies, the business was successfully growing by 10% every year from 2002 to 2011. But with the introduction of in-house analytics team, the business growth has boosted to 30%.

Analytics has helped many start-ups in many possible ways. Analytics allowed them to predict their capability of how customer demands could be met, by understanding the traffic patterns and average delivery time for each supplier in major cities. This allows them to make and meet the commitments, or pass on the business where they know that delivery is impossible, or to suggest a next day delivery.

Analyzing supplier performance helps them identify which of their suppliers will fulfil the given order based on their location. The customer complaints are analyzed to drop poor performing suppliers due to on-time or product quality issues. Also one can identify those customers, who are more interested and are more likely to come back and repeat business so it helps in optimizing your marketing investment.

Building long-term relationships with customers maximizes the value. Turning the analytical focus inward has helped significantly to improve staffing levels forecasts which help to manage operational costs. Even the positioning of products on the website is measured using analytics to identify the best location to help drive engagement and sales. In order to understand which are the most popular products or a combination of products and this can vary regionally as well as seasonally, one needs active support of the analytical tools used for the business purpose. Analytics also help them to target the right product at the right time increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

Now to throw some light on how start-ups should be doing analytics- an overview has been given stage by stage for better understanding.

Founding Stage The most important thing that company needs to make sure that they are measuring their product properly, because it is the product metrics that will help them iterate quickly in this critical phase. The one in an ecommerce business really needs to make sure that his Google Analytics (GA-web analytics tool by Google) ecommerce data is good. GA can track ecommerce business all the way from visitor to purchase, so it is a necessary requirement for the company. Any tool such as Mixpanel (Product and User 4

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Analytics by Mixpanel) and Heap (Mobile and Web Analytics) all are equally good. Any financial reporting should be done in Quickbooks (accounting software package developed by Intuit) and forecasting should be done in Excel. Baremetrics (Subscription Analytics developed by Crunchbase) for subscription metrics can be used if one is interested to invest in a subscription business. If someone is in an ecommerce business, use shopping cart platform to measure gross merchandise value (GMV).

Early Stage Now to help start-ups grow at faster rate more reliable metrics, more flexibility and a better analytical platform for future growth is needed. For that one needs to set up data infrastructure. This means choosing a data warehouse, an ETL (extract, transform, load) tool, and a BI tool. For data warehouses, use Snowflake and Redshift . For ETL tools, use Stitch and Fivetran. For BI use Mode and Looker.

Mid-Stage This stage is potentially the most challenging. In this stage start-ups have a relatively small team and few resources, and their work can directly impact the success or failure of the company as a whole. To ensure success, start-ups should implement a solid process for SQL-based data modelling. The data models serve as the underlying business logic for analytics.

Growth Stage This stage is all about creating analytics processes. Here start-ups can start implementing data testing. Use pull requests and code reviews. Any analytic code is an asset, just like the code that powers your website and application. Get every one of the team members in git, train them how to use branches.

Though traditional business intelligence (and data mining) software does a very good job but it has some disadvantages which can be overcome by predictive analytics. Predictive analytics uses data patterns to make forward-looking predictions that guides start-ups to as where they should go next. Predictive analytics help them in targeted direct marketing. By integrating customer data from multiple web and social media, these companies can determine promotional effectiveness from narrowly defined customer segments, from location, or from delivery channel. By using proper predictive analysis, they can display the best ad based on the likelihood of a click, as well as the bounty paid by its sponsor. Analytics also help in fraud detection. Businesses need to minimize false insurance claims, inaccurate credit applications and false identities and analytical tools help them doing so. Also predictive analysis helps in investment risk management .One can do “big data” analysis to find out whether one is contemplating an investment in his favorite start-up, or a little-known stock on a public exchange because the decisions can’t possibly be evaluated by individuals without predictive analytics. Customer retention is another field where also one needs predictive analytics. Every business should have the necessary model to predict which customers are about to leave, and for what reasons, so they can target their retention efforts. A retention campaign may cost more than it gains if predictive campaign is not conducted.

There are few more examples where predictive analytics are doing wonder such as movie recommendations. Movies are selected, or recommended to customers, based on past reviews, related interests, or analysis of Twitter comments. Next is providing guidance for education studying and targeted learning. Every quiz show expert would like some guidance to identify which question areas need more study and every student needs help on how to spend his limited study hours more effectively.

Schools need the same analysis to provide more effective teaching media and techniques. So start-ups which are dealing in education sector are greatly benefitted by analytics. Another example is clinical decision support systems. With costs escalating in healthcare today, it’s more important than ever to

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determine which patients are at risk of developing certain conditions, like diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and other lifetime illnesses. Additionally, predictive analytics can help make the best medical decision at the point of care. So start-ups attached with this type of facilities will be greatly benefitted.

Also insurance and mortgage underwriting are using analytics on a large scale. Predictive analytics will accurately determine a reasonable premium for auto insurance companies to allow them to cover each automobile and driver. Similarly a financial entity needs to accurately scrutinize a borrower's capacity to pay before providing a mortgage to minimize credit/default risk.

Some experts termed predictive analytics as “business analytics” intending to define a holistic term including data warehousing, business intelligence, enterprise information management, analytic applications, and enterprise performance management. This business intelligence market is growing nine percent per year, with about 50 percent contribution from predictive analytics. So analytics can revolutionize present era specifically boosting the operations in start-up.

References: http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-global-becoming-an-analytics-driven-organization/$FILE/eyglobal-becoming-an-analytics-driven-organization.pdf https://blog.kissmetrics.com/startup-analytics/ https://data36.com/predictive-analytics-101-part-1/ https://www.scnsoft.com/blog/4-types-of-data-analytics https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VJS5qQWOKUIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR17&dq=paper+on+data +analytics+used+in+start+ups&ots=nXjsEWtO89&sig=6JxRp6tmut8 https://cambridgeservicealliance.eng.cam.ac.uk/resources/Downloads/Monthly%20Papers/2015FebruaryPape rTheDDBMInnovationBlueprint.pdf

By Samoshri Mitra PGDM IB (2017-19)

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Sub Article Tableau – Understanding its basic application Many of the corporates are troubling now-a-days over handling data and processing it. Many times we could not find programmer or statistician to help us in queries. Often you find yourself waiting in queues for IT people to process your data.

IT professionals end up making data either tough to interpret or the analysis part is not done quite well. We are dealing with spreadsheet fill with millions of rows and columns but when it comes to process it many add-ins just took so much time and create all the same charts and graphs that were there since ages. Years after year’s computer wizards have developed many ways of interpretation and Data Visualization being the most effective amongst them.

Something is easily understood when instead of showing numbers and tables you can have something that is more visually appealing, that way we can interpret it more easily. Tableau is data visualization software that makes your uninteresting data looks more interesting. Data visualization is not new programmers had often used many types of charts, graphs but data analyst were in search for something more powerful and interactive, here Tableau bridges the gap.

As per Gartner’s analysis on different types of business intelligence tools, Tableau is one of the best Business intelligence tool available in the market, and they are one among the leaders since last six years, with Microsoft and Qlik next in the rank.

Tableau is a software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States that produces interactive data visualization products for purpose of business intelligence. It initially began in order to commercialize research which had been conducted at Stanford University's Department of Computer Science between 1999 and 2002. It was founded in Mountain View, California in January, 2003 by Chris Stolte, who specialized in visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and data cubes.

Tableau is a business intelligence tool which help us to analyze data in the form of visual manner. With the help of graphs, reports and etc. Definition of Tableau is very lengthy it’s like a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant. Suppose you have a database in MS Excel it can be any data like Bigdata, Hadoop, SQL or any cloud base data base, if you want to analyze that data in different form of charts, reports, you can use Tableau.

Tableau offers different types of products for creating and publishing content. Tableau Desktop, Tableau online, Tableau Server, Tableau Reader and Tableau Public. Here Desktop and Online are used for creating data reports while Server, Reader and Public are used for publishing that Data reports.

Tableau supports many different types of databases most of them are Spreadsheets, Databases, Bigdata, Access data warehouses, Cloud applications, Cloud Database and 50 other different types of databases.

Tableau is very versatile tool you can use it on all the major platforms and devices like Computers, Tablets and phones.

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How Tableau works: If you want to analyze data in MS Excel you need to first create pivot table and then add different columns in to different fields like rows, columns, values and filter. After that we can have different types of charts, graphs and reports. Here in Tableau we have two different fields’ Dimensions and Measures. All the textual, geographical data and dates comes under the Dimensions field. And all the Numbers, figures and float values comes under Measures field. They both are located on the left side of the dashboard.

With the help of Tableau we can generate 24 different types of charts like Bar chart, Stacked Bar chart, Pie chart, Line chart, Scattered chart, Packed bubble chart, World map chart, Tree map, Waterfall chart, Geographical map, Basic funnel chart, Advanced funnel chart and many more.

Tableau has got many advantages over other business intelligence tools, it is faster, user friendly with beautiful interactive dashboard to work with, Direct connection with multiple databases, Data creating and publishing is very easy just drag and drop! We can create some basic stories and with many sheets we can create some dashboards also.

Reference: https://www.tableau.com/reports/gartner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tableau_Software#Public_company https://www.tableau.com/about https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2013/02/22/a-tableau-solution-to-those-excel-blues/#76876f6875c8

Here some screenshots are attached: 1) Dashboard

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2) Decision making Tree chart

3) Area chart

By Shubham Thakur PGDM IB (2018-20)

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QuantGuru Akshay Venkatesh (B-1981) Early years Akshay Venkatesh was born in Delhi, India, to a middle-class Hindu Tamil Brahmin family, who moved to Perth in Western Australia when he was 2 years old. Venkatesh attended extracurricular training classes for gifted students in the state mathematical Olympiad program and in 1993, whilst aged only 11, he competed at the 24th International Physics Olympiad in Williamsburg, Virginia, winning a bronze medal. Later he participated in the Australian Mathematical Olympiad and got 2nd rank. In the 6th Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad, he won a silver medal and won a bronze medal at the 1994 International Mathematical Olympiad held in Hong Kong. At the age of 13, he joined the University of Western Australia as its youngest ever student.

Venkatesh completed the four year course in three years and became, at 16, the youngest person to earn First Class Honors in pure mathematics from the University. He was awarded the J. A. Woods Memorial Prize as the most outstanding graduate of the year from the Faculties of Science.

Research career Venkatesh commenced his PhD at Princeton University in 1998 under Peter Sarnak, which he completed in 2002, producing the thesis Limiting forms of the trace formula. He was then awarded a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served as a C.L.E. Moore instructor.

He was a member of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) from 2005 to 2006. He became a full professor at Stanford University on 1 September 2008. After serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the IAS in 2017-2018, he returned to the IAS as a permanent faculty member in mid-August 2018.

Recognition Venkatesh was awarded the Salem Prize, given to a "young mathematician judged to have done outstanding work in Salem's field of interest—the theory of Fourier series” and the Packard Fellowship in 2007. In 2008, he received the US$10,000 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, given for "outstanding contributions to areas of mathematics influenced by the great Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan" and "only awarded to those under the age of thirty-two (the age of Ramanujan at his time of death)." The prize was presented at the International Conference on Number Theory and Modular Forms, held at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan's hometown.

In 2018, he was awarded the Fields Medal, commonly described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics, becoming the second Australian (after Terence Tao) and the second person of Indian descent (after Manjul Bhargava) to be so honored. The short citation for the medal declared that Venkatesh was being honored for "his synthesis of analytic number theory, homogeneous dynamics, topology, and representation theory, which has resolved long-standing problems in areas such as the equi-distribution of arithmetic objects."

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshay_Venkatesh

By Dropad Saxena PGDM (2017-19) 10

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Curiosity Update ---- This updates readers on space exploration around the world including our own ISRO’s efforts..

NASA Awards $2.3 Million in Grants to Minority Serving Institutions to Expand STEM Education NASA's Minority University Research and Education Program (MUREP) Aerospace Academy (MAA) has selected seven Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) for cooperative agreement awards totaling nearly $2.3 million. The grants will be used to build the interest, skills and knowledge necessary for K12 students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers.

These selections will increase the participation and retention of historically underserved and underrepresented youth in grades K-12 through hands-on STEM activities. Awardees will receive up to $325,000 for a two-year period.

The selected institutions are: 

Albany State University, Georgia: Albany State University will advance excellence in out-ofschool learning time for underrepresented and underserved students in grades 6-12. Specific strategies include professional development for teachers and the development of a project-based STEM curriculum that focuses on NASA mission themes of Aeronautics and Mars exploration. This project will include the infusion of space science and engineering, physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, computer programming, artificial intelligence and machine learning into middle and high school curricula, affecting 1,600 middle and high schools in the region. 

California State University, Fresno: California State University, Fresno, will focus on increasing STEM interest, engagement, literacy and skills among approximately 3,000 underserved students in grades 1-12. The university will partner with various organizations to conduct an evaluation and lay the groundwork for STEM engagement throughout California, and Fresno State student teachers will integrate NASA-themed experiential learning opportunities into expanded learning programs for afterschool, Saturday and summer activities. Their efforts also will focus on activities that increase STEM awareness among parents of students and will link families to STEM resources. The program will incorporate NASA resources, such NASA Smartphone Apps, NASA Wavelength (a site for Earth and space education), and materials available through the university’s NASA Educator Resource Center. 

Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina: Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) will conduct a comprehensive outreach program for K-12 education in rural northeastern North Carolina.

ECSU will adopt a grade-appropriate NASA curriculum to enhance authentic and experiential learning experiences through the integration of 3D printing technology, virtual reality simulation, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design, mobile robotics, computer programming, and sensor-based measurement systems. The project will extend learning to local school districts through the use of a state-of-the-art mobile aerospace education lab. The hands-on activities will inspire and engage students in problembased learning and scientific inquiry. This collaborative project is expected to directly impact at least 1,450 students.

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

Navajo Technical College, Crownpoint, New Mexico: Navajo Technical University (NTU) proposes to develop a robotics academy in partnership with the newly established Bond Wilson Center for Technologies in Kirtland, New Mexico. This new partnership provides high school students from tribal reservation communities advanced classes in aerospace manufacturing, unmanned aircraft systems, conceptual design and planning, and employee skills development. The NTU robotics academy will provide students with a stimulating environment to unleash their curiosity and creativity in information technology and STEM. NTU will partner with Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute’s training faculty and interns at their year-round robotics center to leverage existing NASA projects. The university also will develop an experiential learning robotics syllabus that is respectful to traditional Navajo culture and transportable to other tribal serving institutions. 

Tennessee State University, Nashville: Tennessee State University (TSU) will create a STEM curriculum based on three thematic modules, each containing problem-based learning methods enriched with hands-on instructional strategies. This program will capitalize on the NASA Aerospace Education Laboratory, which provides a flight simulator, inflatable planetarium, drones, robotics, Ozmo Coding, immersive virtual reality technology, and a computer lab with NASA software. The project will expand its reach by increasing capacity through a strategic partnership with elementary and middle schools from the Metropolitan Nashville Public School District. 

Texas State University, San Marcos: Texas State University, San Marcos, will offer early STEM learning experiences for upper elementary and middle school students, family engagement, and professional development for teachers in central Texas. The university will offer students and families resources in both English and Spanish, and instructional strategies that value the culture and multilingual skills of the majority of participants. The university will offer a STEM professional development program to teachers in the local school district, who will serve as program instructors. In addition, they will measure the program’s impact on participating students and teachers. 

The University of Texas at El Paso: The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) will expand its reach to severely underserved areas of El Paso County by forming a collaborative alliance with the United Way and Lockheed Martin Space Systems. This alliance will implement three new dedicated tracks of study to empower young thinkers to explore research, experimentation, and the engineering design process that will culminate in a capstone project.

MUREP investments enhance the academic, research and technological capabilities of MSIs through multiyear grants. The MUREP Aerospace Academy provides opportunities for participatory and experiential learning activities in formal and informal education settings to connect learners to unique NASA resources.

NASA provides financial assistance to minority serving institutions with MUREP's competitive awards.

These institutions recruit and retain underrepresented and underserved students, including women, girls, veterans and persons with disabilities, into STEM fields.

Reference: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-23-million-in-grants-to-minorityserving-institutions-to-expand-stem

By Khushbu Mehta MMS-Finance (2017-19) 12

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Quant News Digest AI Researchers developed new technique that can detect first signs of blindness The pace at which medical imaging technology is growing, is astounding. Thanks to this, artificial intelligence (AI) can now expose first signs of blindness. A team of researchers from DeepMind in collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, London UK, have developed a new technique which uses deep learning to diagnose vision threatening diseases.

Reference:https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/ai-researchers-develop-new-technique-that-candetect-first-signs-of-blindness/

PM Narendra Modi lauds IITs for bringing technological transformation in India On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the 56th convocation ceremony of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B). Modi’s speech highlighted the achievements of IITs and how it transformed the technological outlook in India over the years.

Reference:https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/pm-narendra-modi-lauds-iits-for-bringing-atechnological-transformation-in-india/

Closer C-level collaboration needed to bridge gap in cyber readiness With the convergence of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT), opportunities are surging for brands to use advanced analytics to learn – and deliver on – what their customers expect in any given moment and place. A new study, conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and sponsored by SAS, Intel and Accenture Applied Intelligence, reports that companies using customer analytics are already achieving notable gains. Yet most believe themselves to be a far cry from effectively servicing their customers in real time.

Reference:http://analytics-magazine.org/most-brands-fall-short-of-applying-customer-analytics-inreal-time/

Why is Auto-Keras gaining such popularity?

Auto Keras is the new open-source neural network library built for automated machine learning. This is built upon Keras where one with less knowledge about machine learning can make use of this library to build neural networks. This library makes the job easy with the help of automated search for hyperparameter selection and finding the optimized values. A statement published by Automation Anywhere claims that this is one of the largest Series A rounds on record for an enterprise software company.

Reference: https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/why-is-auto-keras-gaining-such-popularity/ 13

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Most brands fall short of applying customer analytics in real timeTop of Form With the convergence of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT), opportunities are surging for brands to use advanced analytics to learn – and deliver on – what their customers expect in any given moment and place. A new study, conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and sponsored by SAS, Intel and Accenture Applied Intelligence, reports that companies using customer analytics are already achieving notable gains. Yet most believe themselves to be a far cry from effectively servicing their customers in real time.

Reference:http://analytics-magazine.org/most-brands-fall-short-of-applying-customer-analytics-inreal-time/

World’s First Block chain Bond to be issued by the World Bank The finance world is all set to witness world’s first block chain bond. The World Bank announced that it will sell the first-ever digital finance bond which will be issued entirely using block chain technology. The World Bank has arranged one of the “Big Four” banks in Australia, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank or the CBA) as the sole manager of the block chain bond. CBA will arrange for the creation, allocation, transfer and manage the first bond through its life cycle using distributed ledger technology.

Reference: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/worlds-first-blockchain-bond-to-be-issued-by-the-worldbank

By Khushbu Mehta MMS-Finance (2017-19)

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Faculty Corner The members of Quantinuum committee had an opportunity to interact with Dr. Kingsley Gnanendran.

S. Kingsley Gnanendran, Ph.D. is Professor of Operations Management, and Director of the Online MBA Program at the University of Scranton. Dr. Gnanendran has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada as well as Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing, China. In recognition of his teaching excellence, the Kania School awarded him the Alperin Teaching Fellowship in 2003. Dr. Gnanendran received his Ph.D. in management science from The University of Tennessee, a M. Eng. degree in industrial engineering from The Asian Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from The University of Sri Lanka. He is currently a member of INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) and APICS (The Association for Operations Management). His research interests involve the application of optimization modelling to supply chains, and his publications have appeared in: Decision Support Systems, Mathematical Programming, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, and SIAM Journal of Discrete Mathematics.

He addressed Quantinuum committee members on the key challenge in Supply chain management which is “How to match supply with demand”. In the talk Dr. Gnanendran has introduced the concept of 3Vs of supply chain that effect the supply chain strategies of the companies. The 3Vs that were discussed about were Variety, Variability & Volatility. Although the three words sound similar, Dr. Gnanendran has vividly illustrated the difference between these three in context of supply chain management with various real time examples. Dr. Gnanendran has also touched upon difference between strategies of Conventional supply chains often referred to as broad-brush & Future supply chains which are moving towards pinpoint precision. Another interesting topic that featured in the discussion was the concept of shared economy business models and how digitization and big data analytics is helping this course. Dr. Gnanendran also explained about his views on the future scenarios of supply chain management. On the whole the guest lecture was very fruitful for all the members of the committee and helped us develop a fresh perspective on supply chain management.

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Mentor meetings In the past one month three meetings have been conducted with the Faculty Mentor Dr. Nilakantan Narasinganallur. In the first meeting Dr. Nilakantan has explained the facets of data science and its applications.

He also covered various areas a student of a B-school can venture into to make a successful career in this field. Also students were given a brief on the problem solving approach hands on by giving out some interesting questions to solve and later on explaining the approach methods.

In further meetings all the students were briefed on the MOOC platforms.

MOOC stands for massively open online courses which are offered by various platforms like Coursera, Edx, Udemy etc. Dr. Nilakantan also talked about usage of various courses and how to audit a course and derive value out of it without actually having to pay for the entire course. After the briefing about MOOC, he also spoke about selective courses related to R programming and Python. All the members of the quantinuum were advised to select a course pertaining to data analytics and start pursuing it. Also specialization of the students was taken into consideration and few of the potential projects which were discussed included “prediction of Box office collections for Bollywood movies”, “option derivatives” and “behavioral finance”.

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Internship Diaries Summer Internship forms an important part of b-school curriculum. It provides an individual with the opportunity to have an experience in the corporate world and to understand how professional life would look like after our MBA. My internship with GEP has been one of my most enriching learning experience. GEP is a consulting firm that provides strategy, software, and managed services to enterprise procurement and supply chain teams to achieve more efficient and effective operation.

The selection process of GEP for their Summer Internship program is quite different from that of other organizations which we usually hear about. The process is designed to assess the candidate’s thought process and innovative ideation. I had two rounds of interviews – the first round was on guesstimates and the second round was case based. A logical approach to problem solving is all you need to emphasize on.

My internship began with a three-day induction program in the month of April wherein we were briefed about the functioning and structure of the company. We were also fortunate that we had to opportunity to meet people from the leadership team of GEP. The third day of induction was fun-filled! We had an ice breaking session with also involved interacting with the employees of GEP. (I would not describe this in details and prefer that you find it out yourself!)

Post our induction, I joined GEP in the month of May for the internship program. Prior to joining the organization, every one of us was assigned to a buddy, our “go to person”. They helped us in myriad different ways, from finding the right people to connect with for project to providing us feedback for our performance.

GEP provides its interns with an opportunity to work on live projects and to be the part of the team working for the clients. I worked on two live projects which gave me an in-depth understanding of the sourcing process, various parameters involved in analyzing the market, opportunity and suppliers. Their structured internship program ensured that I learned immensely from the projects undertaken. The open culture and flat hierarchy of GEP gave me an opportunity to connect, interact and learn from many accomplished and proficient people. It also helped me improve my people’s skill, presentation skill and time management. The thoughtful feedback provided during the project review meetings had been invaluable for the project and the overall self-development of the interns.

The opportunity to interact with Roopa Gandhi, President and founder of GEP was inspiring! She spoke about her journey, how GEP came into being and lessons we should learn from life.

I am really glad and thankful to our college and GEP for giving me this opportunity to be a part of GEP. It had been a really wonderful and memorable experience.

By Anjali Tiwari PG-Operations 2017-19 17

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Q U R I O S I T Y - V O L U M E - 9, I S S U E – 8

Quant Fun 1) Secret Santa is a Western Christmas tradition in which members of a group or community are randomly assigned a person to whom they anonymously give a gift.

The rules for determining who buys for whom are as follows. All the participants put their names in a hat. Each player will draw a name in turn. If they should draw their own name they will return it to the hat and draw another. If the last person to draw draws their own name the game is void and everyone starts again. Otherwise people will not return the name to the hat and will buy a present for the person whose name they have drawn.

Adam, Bob and Carol are to play a game of Secret Santa. They will draw in alphabetical order. What are the odds that Adam buys for Carol?

2) You start in the top left corner of a 6x6 grid, your goal is to get to the bottom right corner. You can only move to the right or down. You can't move diagonally and you can't move backwards.

How many different ways are there to get from the start to the finish?

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Q U R I O S I T Y - V O L U M E - 9, I S S U E – 8 Answers: 1)

Initially A draws B or C, effectively with a 50/50 chance as should he draw his own name he just puts it back.

If he draws B represented by AB we are on the left hand side of the diagram. B can now draw A or C, (remember B has gone already,) represented by BA and BC respectively. If B draws A then on the path AB→BA then both A & B have gone leaving C with only C to pick, the game must be void. If A draws B the only viable path is AB→BC→CA If A draws C represented by AC on the right hand side of the diagram. We move to B's turn, as C has already gone he can only pick A or B shown as BA or BB. He cannot buy for himself and if he should pick his own name will return it to the hat. Effectively he has a 100% chance of picking A, as in BA. When C picks only B is left.

We can calculate the probability of each of the 3 outcomes, only two of which are valid by multiplying out the probabilities of each branch: AB→BA→CC = ¼ AB→BC→CA = ¼ AC→BA→CB = ½ Of the games that are successful, we can renormalize to say Adam buys for Carol two thirds of the time.2) It's possibly worth pointing out that 252 = 10C5 Not surprising given we have 10 moves necessary 5 horizontal and 5 vertical in any combination.

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August 2018 Quantinuum, the Quant and Analytics committee of KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research aims to empower students and professionals alike to organize and understand numbers and, in turn, to make good and rational decisions as future managers. The newsletter published monthly consists of a gamut of articles for readers ranging from beginners to advanced learners so as to further enrich the young minds understand the contributions made to the field of mathematics along with a couple of brain- racking sections of Sudoku to tickle the gray cells.

For any further queries and feedback, please contact the following address: KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Vidya Nagar, VidyaVihar, Ghatkopar East, Mumbai -400077 or drop us a mail at quriosity.quantinuum@gmail.com Mentor: Prof. N.S.Nilakantan (+919820680741) Email – nilakantan@somaiya.edu Team Leaders: Purav Shah (+917708521382) VVNS Anudeep (+919441201685) Yatharth Jaiswal (+919969698361)

Editorial Team: VVNS Anudeep (+919441201685) Khushbu Mehta (+919930158610) Kapil Gupta (+917727936906) Aditya Sharma (+918302525599) Samoshri Mitra (+918697440265) Dropad Saxena (+919582337930) Akshay Nagpal (+918800114925)