Why would i buy this book?

Was buying some books from the National Geographic site.

Came across a book's cover page:

link

Anyone in the Indian subcontinent will be surprised by the lack of synchronicity between the book title and the cover. The bindi is not at all an Islamic symbol. In fact, Islam prohibits wearing the bindi.

At this deep level of ignorance, why would i even consider buying the book?

Friendly only if you know English

Yesterday's DNA reports

Although peons are an integral part of a school, often they are unable to strike camaraderie with the students or parents as they are unable to speak in English.

Now, to set things right, many schools are sending their peons to night schools for English lessons.

(emphasis mine)

This is revolting but there's more:

“A school peon is the first person parents turn to for help. He knows the school inside out. But many a times, peons do not know any other language besides Hindi and their native tongue. Parents also tend to disregard them. English lessons will help them in communicating with students and parents alike,” said Sister Rani Anthony, principal, Villa Theresa School, Peddar Road.

i wonder if the good Sister even knows how decidedly ridiculous "does not know any other language besides Hindi and their native tongue" means. Native tongue indeed.

The problem is not with the poor peons. It is with the nouveau crowd who is ignorant about any Indian language. In fact, it is a fashionable statement to say so.  These are the same set of people brought up on Baa Baa Black Sheep and who then go on to consume large amounts of English media, prefer to speak to each other only in English all the while completely ignorant about their own fantastic linguistic heritage lying in their backyard.

In fact, the above quote should be "it is a real pity that parents do not know any Indian language well. They only know (imperfect) English of the type spoken in American serials and reality shows and just about a smattering of their native tongue. We have now decided to burden the poor peons due to the ignorant parents." 

Another mistake here is to confuse good communication skills with communication in English. If anything, the peons will be left worse-off by forcing them to communicate their thoughts  in an alien language. Why not a course on good communication skills per se?

This story is a great example that demonstrates symptoms of a country in a state of rot. Why else would a country with 100s of languages each with incredible depth of expression look to "set right things" since a poor peon cannot speak in communicate in an alien language? Beats me.

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P.S: Thanks to Sandeep who in his comment below reminds me of Becoming Indian by Pavan K. Varma. Highly Recommended.

Woh to Dilliwaala hai

Post prelude: All Delhi lovers: Please forgive me for not liking your beloved city and it's denizens. But these are my genuine feelings.
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Really enjoyed reading this piece by Sandeep.

To be very honest, i get a bad feeling every single time i land in Delhi. The vibe is that of everyone wanting to cheat you -and have no qualms about it. In fact, the bad feeling starts when i am in the airport among a group of seeming Dilliwaalas waiting to get into the shuttle bus. I've often asked myself why? Some example hypotheses i had were:
1) That i am from the South and find myself in a culture i am not familiar with
2) That I associate hold Delhi, being the premier centre of the government of India, responsible for the sorry state of our nation
3) The language issue; while i speak fairly fluent Hindi i don't have the Panju twang so maybe that makes me uncomfortable

Over the years i've come to realize that my discomfort is certainly a cultural one. Sandeep points those out in his post. I think he is in a great position to write about this issue - he's a Panju born and brought up in aamchi-Mumbai and has been living in Delhi for the last three years.

My observations about dilliwaalas:
1) It's all about power, money and who you 'know'.
2) For the upper class, please add faux-intellectualism to the above. As in winter evening India center talks where a firang will come and lecture to a group of bandh-gallas and worn-to-attract sarees about the renaissance that the Buddha created 2000 years ago and the ill effects of the Vedic religion.
3) For the non-upper class, add faux-spirituality to 1). As in attend सतसंग and then illegally extend your apartment for the puja room
4) Brash masculinity. Refined behavior is seen as a sign of weakness.
5) Generally disrespectful towards women
6) Dilli is my world - unless we're talking Southhall or Toronto.
7) Corrolory to 6): All people below MP are मदरासीs and what a bloody funny lot they are.
8) I can do no wrong
9) Corruption is completely okay. After all it's कलियग.
10) Bending and breaking the rules - from traffic lights to more serious ones - are a sign of your power. Getting caught is even better - it's more fun to use bribe or connections to free yourself and tell everyone how you made one call to Girhotra-ji and the hawaldar was quaking.

Top lines from a dilliwalla...and experiences usually are in this sequence:
1) करवा देँगे
2) समझलो आपका काम हो गया। घर जा करके भाभ्जी को कह देना...
3) वो अब तक आया नही? उसे तो मैँने चार घंटे पहले ही भेज दिया
4) Boss,वो एक problem आगई है...खन्ना ओर पैसे माँग रहा है...
5) काम तो आपका हो जायेगा...बस थोडा wait करना पडेगा...
6) अरे! मैं आपको help कर रहा हूँ और आप...मैँ कहाँ कोई भागके जा रहा हूँ क्या?
7) वो deposit तो मिलना मुशकिल है पर...

For long i felt i alone had this impression about Delhi. Until in a sales meeting many years ago, when an executive claimed that there were going to a lot of orders next month from client X, a manager said "कोई भरोसो नही...वो दिल्लीवाला है"

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More reading

Myths and Misconceptions in Survey Sampling - 2 (SRS is the "safest" sampling scheme)

In the first of this series, we looked at what SRS is. It certainly is the simplest sampling scheme. But not the safest.

Think of a population of 100 people made up of 50 girls and 50 boys. Your task is to sample 10 persons. You go ahead and take a SRS sample expecting that you'll anyway get a "representative sample" expecting 5 girls and 5 boys. But do not be very surprised if you get 3 girls and 7 boys. Why? Chance. For the same reason that you do not always get one head and one tail exactly when you toss a coin twice. Best way to understand this is to conduct a small simulation in R:

#create a population of boys, girls and total  
pb <-  rep("B", 50)                             
pg <- rep("G", 50)                           
pt <-  c(pg, pb)
 
#create an empty list to store results of sampling
s1 <-- rep(list(rep("NA",10)),1000) 
 
#take 1000 samples of 10 persons each (with replacement)
for (i in 1:1000) {
     s1[[i]] <- sample(pt, 10)
}
 
#calculate % of boys selected in each sample of 10 and plot results  
s2 <- sapply(s1, function(x) length(x[x=="B"])*10)
hist(s2)

Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

Of course, practically we would do this exercise just once and not 1000 times. But the above histogram illustrates that there is a chance (though small) that you can end up having even 2 boys in a sample of 10 individuals. A better approach in this case is to stratify the population into girls and boys and choose 5 out of 50 from each.
Bottomline: SRS is not the safest sampling scheme. Stratification is an insurance against chance.

Yet, there are times when you might need to use SRS:
1) You have nothing but a list of elements but no extra information on them. e.g drawing a sample from a list of voters in an area
2) When being correct might weaken your case (such is life). Sharon Lohr in her book gives the example of a legal case where a complicated sampling scheme might seem like "you are making the number up".

Myths and Misconceptions in Survey Sampling - 1 (SRS , EPSEM and Self-weighting samples)

1. Misconception 1: SRS , EPSEM and Self-weighting samples are interchangeable terms
Many use these terms interchangeably in conversation or writing. But, for example:

"Similarly we must avoid the common confusion of epsem with simple random sampling (srs). Probably most  survey samples are epsem but very few are srs (outside academic writing)

(Leslie Kish: Selected papers, Leslie Kish, Graham Kalton, Steven Heeringa)

In fact, even Wikipedia makes that mistake!

"A self-weighting sample, also known as an EPSEM (Equal Probability of Selection Method) sample...

Let's see why these terms are not interchangeable.
1) Simple Random Sampling (SRS)
The basic form of sampling similar to a draw of balls from an urn (aren't you tired of urn examples?).

"Simple Random Sampling is a method of selecting n units out of the N such that even one of the NCn distinct samples has an equal chance of being drawn. In practice a simple random sample is drawn unit by unit.

Sampling Techniques, Cochran (Chapter 2)

So, each population frame element has an equal chance of being selected irrespective of how many at a time the sampling is done - individually, pair-wise, three-at-a-time etc. Also,

"We shall restrict the term simple random sampling to situations where the elements are selected individually, hence the elements are also the sampling units. This differs from cluster sampling where the sampling units are clusters containing several elements.

Survey Sampling, Kish 2.1

2) EPSEM

"Sample Designs assigning equal probabilities to all individual elements of a frame population are called "epsem" for Equal Probability Selection Method

Survey Methodology, Robert M. Groves, James M. Lepkowski et al., 4.3

So,
1) EPSEM is not one specific sampling method but consists of many types as long as they all result in (known) equal selection probabilities
2) SRS is a type of EPSEM but every EPSEM need not be (and usually is not) an SRS. For example,  Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) is an EPSEM design that is a type of cluster sampling (see above quote from Kish) i.e not SRS.

3) Self-weighting samples:

We collect data from samples not as an end in itself but to learn something about the population from which the samples were drawn. In this process, a weight is attached to each sample element. Why? To correct any possible imbalances that might (will) crop up in the process of implementing the design. For example, say you draw a simple random sample from a list of people. At this stage every person has an equal chance of being selected and thus the same weight.  

Now if each person that was contacted responded to the survey and there were no other survey problems (like the filled-in questionnaire getting lost!), each person would still have the same weight, which would actually be the inverse of his selection probability) . This kind of a sample would be called a self-weighting sample.  

But in practice, you find that the response rate to your survey among the upscale people is lower than the rest and you've ended up getting more responses from the non-upscale folk. This would make your results biased. To compensate for this we would calculate an apply a weight that will upweight an upscale person (and therefore downweight the rest). So what started off as an EPSEM design is no longer a self-weighting sample. In fact, this is actually what ones finds in practice and so:

"Others have used the phrase self-weighting sample, although some eschew this term, given that weighting typically involves nonresponse adjustment and some form of calibration such as ratio adjustment or raking, and these lead to unequal weights even when all elements of the sample have been selected with equal probability.

 Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods, Ed. Paul Lavrakas. The entry "EQUAL PROBABILITY OF SELECTION"

Summary
1. SRS is an EPSEM method but not every EPSEM is SRS
2. Every SRS is self-weighting (in principle) but every self-weighting sample need not be SRS
3. EPSEM samples are self-weighting in principle but not in practice