Useful Lessons Learned in the program

1- Never bet real money with a statistics professor. Odds are against you.
2- E.I (Emotional Intelligence) is more important than I.Q (Intellectual Quotient).
3- Every teacher is trying to convince you that his or her class is at the center of decision making in business, in economies in general, and in fact, in the world at large.
4- We studied correlation between various sets of data in our statistics class and the teacher ran a survey of INSEAD students. She gathered data about age, height, weight, GMAT scores, GPA (grade point average), sex, nationality (French, English, North American, etc…), shoe size, etc, etc…She then ran some simulation to show us the correlation, or absence thereof, between factors. For instance, GPAs are not very linked to GMAT scores but weight and height move in the same direction. Our group tried to run the same simulation to check out the correlation between the variable ‘English” and the variable “sex” but we came up with a negative result.
Since then some people commented that this had to be incorrect as they believed that these two variables were independent

Salaries after school seem to show negative correlation with grades while at school. This is very good news for me. On top of that, INSEAD has a relative grading system so I have just learned that my grades are going to be some random variable on a Normal Distribution curve. With all this randomness in the air, I think that I can concentrate on what I came here to do: study…

5- Stats is actually a fun class. We had to decide whether M&Ms’ claim that in any bag of M&Ms, 10% of the chocolate chips will be of green color, was true. In order to do this, the teacher distributed a pack of chocolate chip per person. Here we are, 80 MBA students counting out 47 chocolate chips in each bag, and then the number of green ones…
When I was studying science and stats at university, it was a class full of monstrously big formulas that I had programmed in my scientific calculator and just pulled up on an as-needed basis. In this class, scientific calculators are forbidden! We must calculate probabilities based on probability tables of various distributions. The purpose of the class is to help people deal with uncertainty, apply statistics to predict outcomes and make informed decisions, while quantifying the risk. So for the first time in my life, I think that I am actually enticed to understand statistics.

6- If there is a Normal Distribution curve, where are the abnormal ones?

7- One of the group exercises in which we had to do another truly important project, such as building some elaborate vehicle to crash an egg from the first floor to ground level with no breakage, featured instructions in unusual languages. The instructions for each group were written in Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian, and Arabic. I think that one group had it in Norwegian.
8- Typical Answer in an executive finance class from a typical student (banker): “I do not care about shareholders. First off, they are disgustingly rich already, Secondly, they are stupid”
9- In an ethics class, we were asked to reflect upon the following problem:
In Asia – where corruption is part of day-to-day business life – a quality inspector from the government asks for two things in return for a favorable report
a. a plane ticket to see his ailing mother
b. a talking blanket for his evening (or cash equivalent)

Reactions were very interesting. Let me pick a couple

One student proposed that the talking blanket be sent to the ailing mother to keep her warm using the plane ticket
One student asked about the going prices of talking blankets in this region to see whether the request looked reasonable or not

10- No Mutual Fund Manager is better than chance and most strategies at picking funds are as good as tossing a coin. Even if you put 20 monkeys and ask them to throw darts at a board to pick the right stock, you can find a Buffett Monkey.
11- Stats class confirmed the efficiency and fairness of the financial market. A blind-folded monkey throwing darts at a Wall Street Journal stock listing has the same probability to pick a good stock as any odd investor in the world.
12- If a Sales Person tells you that sales in this market follow a uniform distribution it means that he or she has no clue. According to prof, a uniform distribution of variables is a mathematical expression of ignorance. Very deep.