By the time you read this, I would be dead.

This morning as I read through news on google news my mind is in overdrive. The heading of this article is the title of a piece of news I read (Click here to read it yourself ). The article "spoke" about a Dr. Turner who at 58 chose to travel to Zurich from UK to "die with dignity". She had a neurological disease and she had seen her husband die of a similar disease. Dr. Turner could speak and move about, she was not in pain, but the prospect of a future where she was going to steadily decline... that was scary.

In the article, she says "I know that people say that I look well, but I am not." It is the thought of being increasingly dependant on others that upset her.."I am just so tired of being dependent on people..."

It brings to my mind the cycle of life. For the first decade of our life we are so dependant on other people, but no one regrets that. If in the first years of our life, we are dependant on our parents, later on in life we complete the circle and we are dependant on the next generation. I understand that in many countries there simply aren't enough people in the next generation to take care of older people... but that's another matter.

The article goes on to say..."Dr Turner was at the relatively early stages of the disease and was still able to walk unaided, eat and communicate." Dr. Turner died at Zurich from taking barbiturates. She believed her life is over.

The next piece of news that I read was about how Mario Lemieux, an Ice Hockey champ was quitting because he was too old to play at 40. I wonder what he sees when he looks into his future. Dr. Turner brings the question of the "Purpose of Life" chillingly to our minds. In the movie, " Whose Life is it Anyway ", a broadway adaptation, a sculptor decides life is not worth living because he cannot use his hands any more.

When do I decide my life is over? Do I have to make that call? I am not in a position to make any profound observations about and indvividual's right to die, but it does raise an important question that most of the time we would rather not think about.

I graduated from IIPM ????

In another PR first, it has been suggested that I am an IIPM graduate! Check here for the comment, which I certainly did not make on the IIPM blog! Another way of getting google to increase ratings? Guerilla Marketing?

http://indianinstituteofponytailmanagement.blogspot.com/2005/12/ponytail-management-emerging.html#c113402310907546596

Mathai Fenn

Between a rock and a hard place

When I was young I refused to learn my multiplication tables. I said that now that humans have invented a handheld calculator, there was no reason for us to to Arithmetic manually. I only wish school kept up with the pace of modern inventions. In schools they didnt let us use the calculator and soon enough I found myself lagging behind in Arithmetic. Then they invented the computer, something that could do even more complicated sums without blinking a.....diode?

In academics today, one way of proving yourself is to do some complicated statistics. The more complicated it is, the more smart you appear to be. Soon enough every paper was more concerned about the "RIGOUR" of the method than its conclusions. This led us to the absurdity of having more and more "Significant" relationships among "Insignificant" variables. In faculty meetings, people swore that increasingly the new models of Finance and OR were complicated mathematical formulae. Entrance tests measured quantitative skills and analytic reasoning, some people dropped General Knowledge from the entrance tests because "people scored very poorly on it anyway".

What about the rest of us that don't dream by visualizing a green screen and a string of numbers going from top to bottom? (Never mind that was a screen saver that found its way into the the movie MATRIX)

Our salvation is offered by Harvard Business School and its Indian arm, IIM Ahmedabad by way of the case study. At a conference, an IIM(A) faculty explained to us that the case study is the education tool of the future. A case study helps students develop their analytic skills by examining what actually happened on the field. He went on to say that a real case study is FACTUAL first and foremost and has extensive discussion along with facts and figures.

Of course most of us teaching in India cannot afford the $6.50 (Rs. 302.23), charged by Harvard per student cost for each case... oh yes, its cheaper if you make your own copies, they dont ship you any hard copies and it costs only....$6.00 !!! If you would like some, you are welcome to have them at http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/academic/edu_teachres_case_based_courses.jhtml

So like most educators in India, I am caught between the positivistic method and Intellectual Property Rights! Some people take take the war to the streets, by downloading the HBS cases and skillfully erasing the "DO NOT COPY" printed across it before making copies for their whole class.

Yet, how valuable is the case method? How important are these "live cases"? A snippet that has been edited, sanitized and repackaged for classroom consumption? How often is the goings on of some company somewhere relevant to the situations I face in my company?