The following article was contributed by Prof. Debasis Mishra of the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi as part of a campus recruitment initiative for an Master of Science programme in Quantitative Economics. For a very well written paper on the subject by Prof. Mishra with illustrative examples from the real world, click here.

What is Quantitative Economics?

Quantitative economics is a field of study where mathematics, in particular optimization, statistics, algorithms and complexity theory is used as a tool for analyzing and designing economic systems.

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A Bangalore based start up, Capillary provides mobile based customer management solutions, meaning it helps businesses understand the needs of and effectively communicate with their customers through mobile services. One of the co-founders of Capillary, Krishna Mehra (06, RK, CS) shares his experience with us.
TSA: Firstly, a hearty congratulations on winning the Qualcomm Business Plan Competition. We, at The Scholars’ Avenue are indeed very proud of your achievements and would like to narrate your success story to our readers.

Krishna Mehra: Thanks for the chance to interact with people through The Scholars’ Avenue. It really feels privileged, especially since The Scholars’ Avenue was actually started right in front of our eyes, and it’s great to see it moulding public opinion in the institute.

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Don’t let the IIT faculty strikes fool you. For the academically inclined, IIXs are still the best.

T. A. Abinandanan is a Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He writes extensively on a wide range of topics concerning higher education in India, particularly the IITs, IIMs, IISc and such other institutes. His writings can be found at http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com .The Scholars’ Avenue thanks Dr.Abinandanan for contributing this article.

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The Scholars’ Avenue wishes to thank the faculty member who contributed this very excellent article. In deference to his wishes, the article is anonymous.

I am a through and through mediocre person except for occasional bouts of intelligence exhibited typically during leap years. Matters could have been far worse but for the fact that God, in the from of guru, interfered with my life, and guided me as if I was a confused sheep. I carry lasting impressions of some of these great human beings who helped me steer my life and instilled vague love for science and engineering and teaching using which I am able to survive in this greatly bewildering and intimidating world and also make ends meet. At this juncture of pushing very late forties, an inner call tells me, I must make public my reverence and gratitude for these people. (more…)

I had never dreamt I would set foot into IIT Kharagpur’s classrooms one day. Being a student there was out of the question—I had struggled with subjects like physics, chemistry and mathematics in school. As for being a teacher there, what would I teach India’s budding scientists? IIT was another world and it did not intersect mine in any way. Further, as I was born and bred in Kolkata, my activities had tended to revolve around this city. When I came back to India after obtaining higher education in the West, it seemed natural that I settle into my known world. Yet, the unthinkable happened because I was looking for a challenging career and this meant I would need to look beyond my comfort zone. I had studied Humanities, and luckily for me, like all other IITs, IIT Kharagpur had a Humanities and Social Sciences department. Thus, one fine morning, I found myself walking along the corridors of IIT Kharagpur towards room, F-116, my heart beating gently at the prospect of addressing a class of undergraduate engineers. One glance at the audience and another first screamed at me—there were hardly any girls in the class. On the flip side, about forty five young men had gathered in a classroom to learn French as a foreign language and that challenged a stereotype many Indians have about scientific education—scientists do not study languages. 

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If I was ever asked how bad do you see it getting, I would have said ” It will get bad , real ugly “  . But never even in a nightmare scenario did the current level of wealth destruction ever enter the null hypothesis.

Wall Street has gotten smarter over the years in the way it hires its people. They have targeted recruitment programs from a diversified bunch of schools and countries as well as going from Undergrads all the way up to PhD students. Some of the “quant” skills were ( and still are ) used to run various statistical analysis and stress tests on market scenarios to build products that even “in the worst of times” would still be “safe”. But clearly we are now beyond a 5 sigma event scenario.
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Sramana Mitra has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. Her fields of experience span from hard core technology disciplines like semiconductors to sophisticated consumer marketing industries including fashion and education. Her current focus, however, is primarily in the realms of Web 3.0 and Enterprise 3.0, and related infrastructure. She has a particular interest in Media and Retail companies and their transition to a Web-centric world.

As an entrepreneur CEO, Sramana founded 3 companies: Dais (Off-shore Software Services), Intarka (Sales Lead Generation and Qualification Software; VC: NEA) and Uuma (Online Personalized Store for selling clothes using Expert Systems software; VC: Redwood). Two of these were acquired, while the third received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren which the company did not accept.

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