Wanted to deal with many avatars of corruption, not just the transfer of money called bribe as a quid pro quo for some favor - films and TV serials corrupting the minds of youngsters, unhealthy industrial effluents corrupting the environment, viruses corrupting files and folders on our harddisk and so on. In this post I will confine to the usual connotation. I will describe an effort I started but did not finish.
The immediate mind recall agency when the word corruption is mentioned is the Excise department with the RTO coming a close second. The employees of the department practice corruption as a well documented process because (a) it gives them extra money to indulge in luxuries which they would have had to forego otherwise and (b) if they do not extract money from clients and pay the bosses their share, they are likely to be punished by transfers and suspensions. Both these causes can be handled better if the families of the employees cooperate.
First the families should be familiar with the nature of work their husbands / fathers do and the constraints under which they work. They should be aware or they should be made aware that the luxuries bestowed on them come out of bribes. The family members should know exactly the take-home salary of their bread-winner. They should refuse to accept goods and services beyond the monthly budgeted items.
Secondly, the families should stand by the menfolk when they face transfer / suspension for refusing to be corrupt. The families should form a union of themselves and collectively support their men in staying away from bribes. How many persons the bosses can afford to transfer / suspend? The effect of mass movement should get channelized in this direction.
The influence of the family in eradicating corruption is very strong. Civil society groups should mobilize the families and enlist their support. This will provide better returns for their effort than fighting the provisions of the Lokpal Bill.
Within the department, some clean executives should encourage the families getting together - organize cultural programs by family members, publish a monthly newsletter with contributions from family members and the management.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Visionally challenged not visually challenged
We do not need some external element to deceive us. We deceive ourselves very often. This is not a hi-fi philosophy statement. I wrote about the six sigma syndrome. Talking of statistics, consider the following:
Assemble a randomly chosen group of 100 people. Find their average height. Add the tallest person on earth, say, an 8-footer to the group. Recalculate the average height of the 101 people. Do you expect to see a large difference? Hardly.
Find the average net wealth of the same 100 people. Now, add one of the wealthiest people in the world, a Buffett, Mittal, Ambani or even a Bill Gates. Recalculate the average wealth of the group of 101 people. Any difference? Huge.
The statistical principle of finding the average of an augmented group is the same. It is only that the behavioral characteristics of height and wealth are different.
Very often we ignore this and blindly apply techniques and solutions from one context and one era to another context and another era without verifying whether they would be applicable or appropriate.
An educational consultant recommended teacher motivation schemes in an aristocratic school as part of school excellence. It did not take off in another school because the latter’s main problem was drop out of children. Unless this was tackled there was no scope of talking about excellence. He then blamed the poor teachers as not motivatable!!
Assemble a randomly chosen group of 100 people. Find their average height. Add the tallest person on earth, say, an 8-footer to the group. Recalculate the average height of the 101 people. Do you expect to see a large difference? Hardly.
Find the average net wealth of the same 100 people. Now, add one of the wealthiest people in the world, a Buffett, Mittal, Ambani or even a Bill Gates. Recalculate the average wealth of the group of 101 people. Any difference? Huge.
The statistical principle of finding the average of an augmented group is the same. It is only that the behavioral characteristics of height and wealth are different.
Very often we ignore this and blindly apply techniques and solutions from one context and one era to another context and another era without verifying whether they would be applicable or appropriate.
An educational consultant recommended teacher motivation schemes in an aristocratic school as part of school excellence. It did not take off in another school because the latter’s main problem was drop out of children. Unless this was tackled there was no scope of talking about excellence. He then blamed the poor teachers as not motivatable!!
Statistical connery
Conmen (and women) and their tricks come in various shapes and modes. We are familiar with some of them in the domains of politics, religion, and business. How about technology and science? Yes, we have heard of some unscrupulous ones indulging in plagiarism. Here is a case of two great corporations taking the collective scientific mind of the world for a spin. The trick is popularly known as Six Sigma.
Sigma, σ, is a symbol in statistics to denote variation Most phenomena in the world are believed to follow, sooner or later, a pattern of behavior called Normal Distribution. I don’t subscribe to it but that is not the issue for this post. The mean or average value is denoted by the symbol μ (pronounced “mu”). If your process is at 1 σ level that means 32 out of every 100 items produced will be defective (their measured value will lie to the left of μ -1 σ or to the right of μ +1 σ). The curve curves down sharply and not gradually. It is called an exponentially decaying curve. Thus 2 σ will mean 5 out of 100, 3 σ will mean only 0.2 out of 100 defects.
The companies in question claimed that they operate at 6 σ level and they gave a byline that only 3.4 defects will be made in a million opportunities. That is impressive on the face of it. But set against the nature of the normal curve it strikes a discord. 6 σ can not be so lenient as to allow one to make so many mistakes. I painstakingly did all the maths stuff to calculate what 6 σ actually demands. I came up with a figure of 2 over a billion. What an ocean of difference between being allowed to make 3.4 defects per million to 2 defects per billion. Then why are these people making a false claim?
When you say deviation, it is implied that the deviation is with reference to a fixed specification. You are able to say that the train arrived 35 minutes late because there is a scheduled arrival time which is fixed. Suppose the Railways says that the scheduled arrival time can be anywhere between 10.15 AM and 10.55 AM. How do you compute the late arrival of the train when it arrives at 11.00 AM? Railways will claim that the train is only five minutes late because they will conveniently choose the 10.55 option. The great corporations have done exactly the same. They can not hold the process under control beyond a certain capability. So they said that our mean is allowed to make excursions on either side of μ to the extent of 1.5 σ. Where technological improvements show no returns, the strategy is to resort to managerial gimmicks. The corporations would have passed the test of ethics if they had underlined the above assumption along with their 3.4 defects per million tagline.
I can think of only one other instance of similar conjob. That happened 5000 years ago. Yudhistira was made to say that “Aswathama is dead ……………. “ and whisper to the tune of drumbeats “the elephant”.
Sigma, σ, is a symbol in statistics to denote variation Most phenomena in the world are believed to follow, sooner or later, a pattern of behavior called Normal Distribution. I don’t subscribe to it but that is not the issue for this post. The mean or average value is denoted by the symbol μ (pronounced “mu”). If your process is at 1 σ level that means 32 out of every 100 items produced will be defective (their measured value will lie to the left of μ -1 σ or to the right of μ +1 σ). The curve curves down sharply and not gradually. It is called an exponentially decaying curve. Thus 2 σ will mean 5 out of 100, 3 σ will mean only 0.2 out of 100 defects.
The companies in question claimed that they operate at 6 σ level and they gave a byline that only 3.4 defects will be made in a million opportunities. That is impressive on the face of it. But set against the nature of the normal curve it strikes a discord. 6 σ can not be so lenient as to allow one to make so many mistakes. I painstakingly did all the maths stuff to calculate what 6 σ actually demands. I came up with a figure of 2 over a billion. What an ocean of difference between being allowed to make 3.4 defects per million to 2 defects per billion. Then why are these people making a false claim?
When you say deviation, it is implied that the deviation is with reference to a fixed specification. You are able to say that the train arrived 35 minutes late because there is a scheduled arrival time which is fixed. Suppose the Railways says that the scheduled arrival time can be anywhere between 10.15 AM and 10.55 AM. How do you compute the late arrival of the train when it arrives at 11.00 AM? Railways will claim that the train is only five minutes late because they will conveniently choose the 10.55 option. The great corporations have done exactly the same. They can not hold the process under control beyond a certain capability. So they said that our mean is allowed to make excursions on either side of μ to the extent of 1.5 σ. Where technological improvements show no returns, the strategy is to resort to managerial gimmicks. The corporations would have passed the test of ethics if they had underlined the above assumption along with their 3.4 defects per million tagline.
I can think of only one other instance of similar conjob. That happened 5000 years ago. Yudhistira was made to say that “Aswathama is dead ……………. “ and whisper to the tune of drumbeats “the elephant”.
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