Analyzing Art

 Seems paradoxical, at first sight. Art is about imagination, possibilities..

Should anyone be analyzing it at all? And what is the analysis worth, if done?

Not all art can and should be, is my view. Some of it is beyond analysis, or liable to misrepresentation through wrong analysis. Unless the artist concurs with the interpretation, that is.

But then, interpretation is something that will happen, regardless. Even among the people who appreciate your art, some will interpret it differently from what you intended it to be. For example, the same film that is liked by many people, could be differently interpreted. The story goes that R.K. Narayan, the author of Guide, based on which Vijay Anand directed the film, did not like the film. Nevertheless, the majority of viewers did, and it is considered a classic today.

I liked the jokes in the film Quick Gun Murugan, and some of the names of characters, like Rice Plate Reddy. The deadpan humour too. Not everyone's cup of tea, maybe, like the TV parody Lola Kutty. I thought it was brilliant (will all my Mallu friends beat me up, I wonder!).

My take is- enjoy it, rather than analyse it. 

Holistic Approach to Life

 Today is the festival of Holi in India. So, naturally, I had to think about the word holistic. I don't remember when I heard the word first, maybe in the 80s while doing my M.B.A. Some other words from the same period were Value Engineering, M.R.P. (later turned into E.R.P.), Positioning, and lots more.

Returning to holistic, that's a view of anything, a more rounded, broad view. So if one were to look at the Corona pandemic, a holistic view would include all stakeholders, including government (worldwide) which learnt (hopefully) that welfare of its people, including healthcare and hygiene, comes before economics, no matter what the Pink papers have to say. Hospitals and healthcare industry, which learnt that R and D has a major role to play, and many frontiers remain unconquered.

The common man in many countries learnt how responsive his government (elected, in democracies) was to his pain. We all learnt to live digitally, order food online, educate our kids online, and work from home. Pollution on roads and in factories declined, weather improved as a result, and some positive effects on health were felt in urban areas.

We also lived with no major congregations for any reason, proving it can be done. Also without international travel- discretionary- and it did not affect us as much as we imagined. Of course, the tourism industry took a hit, and the hospitality sector. And airlines-but most of the airlines always have a yoyoing life, economically, even without a pandemic. 

The biggest negative was not being able to meet classmates, colleagues (those we like and dislike!), teachers, and relatives and friends, whenever we wanted to. A big loss! Hopefully we will get back!

Marketing Research

This is a subject/course I have been teaching for around 27 years, starting in 1991. I got interested in it because of my stint in a company called MBA founded by 3 MBAs from IIM Ahmedabad. Later, after a Ph.D. I returned to India and started teaching M.R., and soon after, wrote a book. Its 4th edition is on its way. A lot of students have contributed to the chapter-end cases in the book, starting with Kirloskar Institute and ending with IIM Indore for the latest edition.

A pic from a recent M.R. class where an interesting in-class exercise is on. I rely on a lot of these to enhance learning about the subject.

There are a lot of hands-on exercises as well as a course project that trains students in doing different things- from formulating research problems, designing a study and executing one. Analysis is just one part of this process.

Atlas ti Software for Qualitative Data Analysis

At the National University of Singapore (where I am attending a course on Quantitative Text Analysis), we had a session on Atlas.ti, a software package that does some qualitative analysis. It is quite neat! Hope to use it in future (sometime soon).

The most interesting thing is, you can use multimedia documents- text, including PDF files, audio, video or photographs and analyse them after coding them into known or experimental categories- deductively or inductively. There is also an Auto-code feature that lets you do coding from the data by scanning the documents, without your specifying the code. You can use the software for focus group data (video), or transcribed data from depth interviews.

That makes it versatile and useful for any kind of input, and outputs can be counts of words or how often each occurs in each document (in the form of an EXCEL file), or plots, etc.. not fully explored all the options yet.

But a good thing to have, for mixed methods or purely qualitative research.

My Failures

Inspired by something I saw on Facebook recently, I will try and recount some of my failures.

I failed to nurture some talents that I had, except maybe writing. I may have been good at cricket if I tried, or Badminton, or singing. But I feel happy that I did not subject anyone to my cricket commentating skills. Or TV-serial acting skills. The last one doesn't exist.

I failed to be firm (an infirmity?) when I could have, a few times. Particularly with my bosses. Though I did get into fights with some, and even quit jobs over those fights.

I usually am a failure at judging people-or being judgemental, to be precise. I feel everyone has lots of talent, and it is usually someone's failure to spot it that puts them in a spot. Maybe I am guilty here.

I am a complete failure at taking life seriously for too long. Sooner or later (usually sooner), I start to see the funny side of it. A congenital problem, I would say.

Being an eternal (non-serious) optimist, I fail to see any reason for the negativity that one sees on TIMES NOW or on Social Media. That, you might say, is a BIG one.

Book Review- The Missing Ink by Philip Hensher

The reason why I picked up this book is because I liked the idea of someone writing about writing by hand, using ink. Which it does, mostly engagingly, though there are a couple of chapters that seemed long, and so it took longer than normal for me to finish it. It does get into pens and quills too,and how the italics and other variants of typefaces came about, with anecdotes about 'societies' and other hardcore admirers of each.

But I have a couple of passages about analysing people's handwriting from a chapter called 'Reading Your Mind' that I found hilarious, and that I will quote-

People who don't close up their lower-case g's are very bad at keeping secrets.

People whose writing doesn't have much in the way of ascenders or descenders- stubby f's and y's which just gesture downwards deadly- don't have much of a sex life.

Anyone who writes a circle or a heart over their i's is a moron.

If you ever come across anyone who signs their name and then runs a line through it, run a
mile. Years of therapy await (him/her).

If the crossbar of the t doesn't touch the vertical part, he is an impatient person. Hire them. They get stuff done.

People who underline their signature are convinced of their significance in the world.

I like the last one, coz I do. Underline, I mean.

Quarterly Returns

If you decide to analyse life in four quarters, 25 years each, and apply investment consultants' criteria to doing it, you may end up with something like this (to be patented, then you can't read it for free)-

Quarter 1: Negative income, (living on credit- mom and dad's money), Return on (their) Investment  uncertain, (Physical) Assets showing healthy growth.

Quarter 2: Income growth healthy, Assets are stable and productive, Return on (your) Investment on a slow but upward trajectory.

Quarter 3: Income at all-time high but matched by expenditure high, NAV just the same. Productivity on the decline, fixed assets changing to realty and shiny metal set to disappear into bank vaults (not in foreign shores), Bonds (with people)  losing value with time.

Quarter 4: All assets (physical and fixed) turning into NPAs, Declining ROI, Net worth close to zero, Bond rating by agencies (those around you)- approaching junk status.

SPSS Workshop at Chennai

IMT is doing a workshop at Chennai for faculty and research scholars, of which I will be a part. On April 6th, 7th and 8th. That is, later this week. This is a skill I picked up while I was getting a Ph.D. in the US of A at Clemson. It has served me well since, and I find its actual use (correct use, if I might add) remains rare in India even today. Mostly, it is because faculty trained in using it are not many. And therefore their research scholars face a handicap.

We have tried to contribute our mite by doing these workshops from the point of view of practitioners/Ph.D. scholars rather than mathematicians- we aren't mathematicians to begin with, anyway. But the user needs to know his needs and some really basic statistics to be able to use this statistical package for his analysis needs. So that is what we try to provide, a little background of what is needed, and some hands-on experience so that the user starts using it, and learns by himself after a while. Tried this at IIM Kozhikode and IFIM Bangalore too, and it was well-received.

Why Chennai? Well, why not? There is demand everywhere, so we'll go wherever the market is. Plan to collaborate with other B schools in future, wherever they might be.