What was your experience with Amartya Sen?

I have not been in Amartya Sen’s classes anywhere, , but have heard him in person once way back in the late sixties/early 70s when he visited the Indian Statistical Institute and Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta where I was a graduate student and Calcutta and Sen had many classmates, friends, admirers, and I am sure some detractors. My then advisor, Professor Jati Sengupta, was a classmate of Sen. These days it is fashionable in India to caricature Professor Sen. It may be his stature in the west, his refusal to budge from his principles, his refusal to be a right-wing monster that most of his detractors would like him to be, but I suspect it is mostly jealousy because he has achieved what, in my opinion, no Indian has at least in the social sciences. It does no justice to put him in a straitjacket of Economics. He is an economist who shuns neither philosophy nor politics. His writings are unusually broad and yet rigorous, and enlightening to read. It is not generally known that at the ripe old a ge of 18 he self-diagnosed his own oral cancer after the doctors pooh-poohed the idea. So he seemed to have a slight speech impediment which I can see creating some difficulties in undergraduate classes. I found his lectures fascinating and in fact made me take some economics courses which I would not have otherwise. I wish I could go back to my younger days only to take his classes. November 3 later this year Professor Sen will turn 90. I hope Harvard is organizing some event, and his students will honour him with a Festschrift.

What is a "professor"?

A long time ago when I was starting my teaching career, on a cross country trip, sitting on the next seat on the plane was a professor from the University of Chicago. He asked me what I did for a living. Proudly, I proclaimed I am a professor. He asked me what I profess. I was embarrassed. I knew what he meant. Oxford dictionary gives two meanings for a professor. First, someone who teaches, and second someone who affirms a faith in or allegiance to something. He meant the second, while I had meant the first. I have worked in at least four fields and held faculty appointments in all those (Management Science, Information Systems, Accounting/Auditing, and Informatics/Information Science). I would be frightened to have to affirm “faith” in or owe allegiance to any of the four, or anything if life for that matter. The word “faith” cringes me as an academic. I prefer my perch as a sceptic. Since then, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I tell them I am a teacher.

Once I served as a department chair. While I did quite well in ensuring the survival of the department, I consider that decision to be the biggest mistake of my life.

On quality education, and whats wrong with it in the USA.

My following response is based on my 36 years of teaching at universities in the US, mostly at post-graduate (masters and PhD level) level. Over those years I have had probably over 2,000 students, mostly at masters level, and students from over a dozen countries. I’ll respond only about American education, but intersperse with comparisons to the UK system (having gone through the sixth form education prior to college.

• Supremacy of Division 1 sports in college, with most high school years wasted in preparing for football/basketball/baseball (or whatever) rather than preparing for college. In fact I was so fed up with this that I refused to pay tuition for my kids if they went to any school that had Division 1 sports, EVEN IF IT WAS AN IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL. One kid tested me on this by being admitted to Brown U. I stood my ground and the kid went to a highly ranked public university. In my humble opinion, Division 1 sports are the greatest corrupting influence on American education. UK schools have their rowing teams, cricket, etc., but not with the religious zeal that American students and their parents display towards sports.
• Political interference to diminish academic freedom. I am lucky I did not teach social “sciences” or humanities, for then the hordes of know-it-alls from either side of political and religious spectrum would have called for my blood if I exercised my academic freedom. My academic competency as well as my sense of fairness would have been irrelevant. I am sure things are not as dire in the UK as I hallucinate, considering the regard in which I hold British sense of fairness.
• In my opinion the elementary schools (first six years of schooling) here in the US are essentially child care for school age children. I remember attending a PTA meeting when some well-known sports figure caught AIDS and still continued to boast about his bedroom conquests; the parents seemed to show no outrage at the behaviour but were more concerned about too much homework for their kids cutting into their “quality time”. Education took a backseat. I am sure everyone in the UK is gung-ho about cricket and are ardent followers of famous cricketers as I was about WG Grace, Don Bradman, Gary Sobers,… in school, but sports was always an extra-curricular activity whichever way you define it. In most American schools sports trump just about everything else, except in some schools where academic excellence is a part of their tradition.
• American undergraduate education has now reached it a stage where it resembles a smorgasbord: you take what you like and leave what you don’t for others. When I taught at a prestigious liberal arts college, a student asked me for a reference for graduate school in Philosophy. The feather in his cap was a course on “Theories of Good Living”; I suspect it had more to do with avoiding difficult issues than philosophical inquiry about what it means to have led a good life. So, the course titles are catchy advertisements for enrolments than food for thought. I am sure in the UK the situation is quite different.

At the graduate school level, American universities excel because they attract the best talent from around the world. And Of course there is a sizeable American component. But this semester I taught a PhD seminar in Informatics; in a class of a dozen there were only 3 or so American students. That should sadden all of us Americans.

How do business schools teach accounting if the professors don't have enough experience?

Very bookishly. I can say that with full confidence, having taught accounting for 36 years at private as well as public universities/colleges, first as faculty member and then as department chair and director of graduate programs. In the old days there was a presumption that you taught accounting only when you had the competence in the subject matter, and that for accounting also meant meaningful practice experience. Then over a period of time since the Ford Foundation report (popularly known as Gordon-Powell report) universities as well as the accreditation body AACSB have de-emphasized practice. What is more important is that you know how to use statistical packages and are an expert at statistical lingo translated for economics. Now you have boatloads of PhDs with people who have learnt with nothing but books from people who too have learnt everything from people who also have learnt only from books. These days, for a sizeable accounting PhD students, in addition, English too is a second (or third) language also learnt from mostly books taught by people who also learnt it mostly from books.

It is difficult to change the situation when accreditation bodies such as AACSB insists on classifying faculty (AQ and PQ, etc.) the way the immigration inspectors at Ellis island classified prospective immigrants in the good old days. Those days, they were worried about immigrants becoming public charges and were not from the “right” countries. These days in accounting, it is to make sure that the faculty have “published” so called “papers” of almost zero consequence to accounting practice in journals that no practicing accountant dare to read for fear of mental derangement.

I would suggest students ask instructors if they have had practice experience. The problem that accounting academics like me faced was reconciling our need to be respected as scholarly colleagues while at the same time proud of our heritage as teaching a profession to aspiring future practitioners. These days, accounting faculty have consigned the latter to the trash heap while really failing in the former.

What happened to the Manchus?

In reality there are 10 million Manchus in China ("Genomic Insight Into the Population Admixture History of Tungusic-Speaking Manchu People in Northeast China), and form the fifth largest ethnic group in China. Manchus are Tungusic people and so closer to Mongolian, and they have a writing system of their own which is an adaptation of Mongolian. They are most certainly NOT Han even though those who had migrated to Han areas absorbed many cultural features of the Hans.(What are the differences and similarities between Manchu and Mongol people?)

In my nearly forty years of college teaching in the US, I have had boats load of Chinese students, many of them Manchus. Whenever I ask them their ethnicity they arlways say Chinese first, and when prodded say Han. But whenever my office door happened to be closed and asked for their ethnicity, they are more honest and admit Manchu as if it would be a crime to confess it in public. Then they breakdown and tell me about how the Hans have destroyed their identity, culture, language, and everything that make them Manchu. They are not allowed to study the Manchu language is schools and universities that today there are only 20 or so Manchu language native speakers left (Saving the Manchu language: 9 critically endangered languages from around the world). There are a few thousands who can speak it as a second language many of whom are probably linguistics scholars. Manchu is an endangered language (Saving the Manchu language: 9 critically endangered languages from around the world), and is being Killed, very sadly.

When there are no fundamental rights one’s ethnic heritage is always a sure casualty. Instead of celebrating ethnic diversity and enabling openness and free speech, tragically we have a situation where it is not safe to even admit one’s ethnicity.

On my learning English

English is my third language, and I learnt English (Latin really) alphabets in the First Form (now sixth standard/grade). I had a hard time. Then I asked a paternal uncle of mine for help; he was an English professor and a Shakespeare scholar. He had a wonderful theory about language learning. He told me, initially just ignore grammar in the classes (that is, just do enough work to pass), but be a voracious reader of GOOD English literature. He cautioned me that it would be a tough row to hoe and frustrating, but would pay off in the long run. The most complex human task ever done by a baby is learning a language, and every child learns language with virtually no help from anybody. He said It matters that whatever I read is high class (otherwise this answer would contain expletives and other bad language). Then he gave me his copy of AJ Cronin’s “The Citadel” to start reading; imagine reading a novel when all you know are just the alphabets and a few words. The dictionary became my best friend and has remained so till now. And he threw his personal library at my disposal. It was the most fascinating experience spending time discussing English with him. In fact I got into trouble with my parents because I was spending more time at his home than at mine.

I learnt the language by repeating patterns of great phrases, clauses, sentences from whatever I had read. I sailed through school, college, graduate school, published quite a bit in my domains of interest. I came back to English grammar after my PhD when I did some work on statistical linguistics. Now a dozen or so books on English grammar are permanently on my desk.

On Goa, Portugal, and India

  As a person with Goan ancestry I have no issues with 1961. All our original temples are in Goa and my family had been thrown out during the inquisition. Around 1956 my grandmother was almost on her death bed and expressed her wish that my thread ceremony be performed at the temple in Goa. But we were not allowed to even enter Goa for a short visit. Her last wish was not to be. My thread ceremony was performed in 1958 in north Kerala, she died six months before India took over Goa.

But I do have a pet peeve about the way the government of India behaved towards Goan INDIANS with regard to language. Since Portuguese had ruled India for over 400 years, most education was in that language which had permeated through the local culture. You only have to look at pictures of Hindu temples in Goa to realise that they ar different. Once India took over, immediately Portuguese ceased to be the official language and stopped teaching it in schools. I remember as a graduate student in Calcutta where a Goan student had to use an English-Portuguese dictionary in the classes. In the meantime Konkani and Marathi could be used only in subordinate courts. India lost a golden opportunity to use Portuguese language as its window to Europe at the same time it was shoving English, no less an alien tongue, on the population fed on Portuguese for centuries.

Goan Indians born before 1961 takeover were offered Portuguese citizenship, and today even the Prime minister of Portugal is a Goan. On the other hand, there were 40,000 Goan Indians born in Portugal with Portuguese citizenship who were still in a purgatory when it came to Indian citizenship after 54 years. Compare that with the British who did not even accept Anglo-Indians but left for the Indian taxpayer the bill for the upkeep of cemeteries where tens of thousand British citizens are buried in India.

The Escola Médico- Cirúrgica de Goa was established in 1842, just a few years after the establishment of Calcutta Medical College in 1835 by William Bentinck. In 1822, Bernardo Peres da Silva and Constancio Roque da Costa became the first two Goans to sit in the Portuguese Parliament in Lisbon. Show me the first Indian who sat in the British parliament (Dadabhoy Naoroji SEVENTY years later in 1892).

It is only after the Carnation revolution in 1974 that the relations between India and Portugal started improving. When I came to US for studies the year before, my passport was NOT endorsed for Portugal (and Israel and South Africa).

In mathematics it is possible to write a great PhD dissertation in a very short time. Here are some examples: George Dantzig was a doctoral student of the great statistician Jerzy Neyman at Berkeley. In one of his classes, Neyman wrote two problems on the board. Dantzig arrived late to the class that day, and thought they were the homework for the week. He solved and submitted them. Then he was told that they were two of the unsolved problems in mathematics. Later, when Dantzig met Neyman to discuss possible dissertation topics, Neyman told him he could submit the “homework” he had done as dissertation. Later, the two were published. Very brief. In dissertation work what counts in posterity is the quality of work and not the bulk. Some of the greatest dissertations i history are ridiculously short. Alan Turing (father of Computer Science) dissertation at Princeton was only 28 typed pages long. The dissertation of John Nash (one of the greatest Game Theorists, also at Princeton, was only 27 typed pages long. The shortest PhD dissertation is supposed to be one in mathematics at MIT that is only 9 pages long. 

 Tragically, the average length of dissertations is 133 pages. See: https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/researcher-determines-average-length-theses-dissertations-quebec/#%3A~%3Atext%3D%E2%80%9CThe%20world%20record%20for%20the%2Chave%20become%20longer%20over%20time.

The length of dissertation titles seems to be getting longer. A grotesque example is the one in Psychology:

“Stress maternel prénatal et développement précoce : données de naissance, attention et sécrétion cortisolaire à trois mois. Association entre le stress maternel prénatal, l’âge gestationnel et le poids de naissance du bébé : une analyse d’études prospectives. Association entre le stress maternel prénatal, l’attention/éveil et la sécrétion cortisolaire de l’enfant à trois mois.”

That probably deserves an IgNobel prize.

For those interested, here are the two papers by Dantzig:

Dantzig, G.B., 1940. On the non-existence of tests of" Student's" hypothesis having power functions independent of σ. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 11(2), pp.186-192.

Dantzig, G.B. and Wald, A., 1951. On the fundamental lemma of Neyman and Pearson. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 22(1), pp.87-93.

Altogether they are only 12 pages long. Incredible. At first I thought it was a tall tale, but then found it had been vetted by snopes:

The Legend of the 'Unsolvable Math Problem' A student mistook examples of unsolved math problems for a homework assignment and solved them.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-unsolvable-math-problem/ The Dantzig story is supposed to be the inspiration for the popular movie “Goodwill hunting”.

Why is it easier to understand English spoken by German, Scandinavian and Dutch English speakers than Indian English speakers? 

I m not a linguist but have dabbled as a CS and statistics person have dabbled in statistical NLP and CL.

 Indian languages, unlike most European languages, have more phonemes, more characters, more consonants, less diphthongs. For example, English has 13 diphthongs while Hindustani (Hndi, Urdu) has just 4. See forr example, <\p>

Low occurrence of Diphthongs seem to enable Indians speak their languages fast. And we speak any language, including English, fast. Secondly most Indian languages have many retroflex consonants that do not exist in English. I would also add a whole bunch of factors that make Indian spoken English difficult. I had already written about speed and diphthongs. I c1. an add four more, and they are entirely the result of lack of emphasis on them in Indian education. They are,

1. Pauses: It becomes difficult to understand Indian English because pauses between phrases, clauses, as well as punctuations such as commas, semicolons. It also makes spoken Indian English sentences runny.<\li>
2. Pronunciations of English letters. They are different for US and UK English; Indians are taught British English most of the time.<\li>
3. Aspiration of first sound in words. Indians pronounce the p sound in pick or paint with no aspiration.<\li>
4. English sounds that don’t exist in Indian languages. For example, the a vowel sound in bank, when written in Indian languages are pronounced as either ‘byank’ (ಬ್ಯಾಂಕ್ in Kannada) or ‘byink’ (बैंक in Hindi.<\li><\ol><\p>

What motivated Tagore to compose the Indian National Anthem?

On India's national anthem.

Most national anthems try to sow FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) as the French anthem does, extoll glory of war and condemn traitors who kept people in chains (in the south) as US anthem does, or an appeal to God to save the sovereign as the British anthem does. Here is Exhibit A:

France:

"Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They're coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your women!"

USA:

"O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;"

When the American Civil War started, in indignation the noted jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. added a stanza that included:

"Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained who our birthright have gained,
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave."

UK:

"God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save The Queen!
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save The Queen!"

The Indian anthem is definitely of the third kind, I suppose a vestige of British imperialism. However, more interesting question is what motivated Tagore to use the British model. Apparently it was not the British anthem, but the anthem of one of the Indian sates, in fact the state from which I come: Mysore. It should not be surprising. The objective of this post is to describe how Tagore was motivated by the Mysore anthem to compose the Indian national anthem.

About Mysore

Mysore is a state that has been peaceful through most of its history. It has neither fought to gain territory nor has it fought to keep others out of its territory. In all it has fought four wars in all. ALL of them against the British which desperately tried to colonise it. All four were fought during the rather unsavoury period in its history when it was ruled by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. While they were trying to protect their realm against the British intruders, their reign was quite unlike the rest of Mysore history in that they tried to colonise parts of southern India that no other dynasty of Mysore did.

Ultimately, in 1799, in the fourth Anglo-Mysore war the British killed Tipu. The Nizam and the Marathas had connived with the British in this. Then the British had the Kingdom of Mysore on its hands, but probably did not know what to do with it. (Like Jinnah who fought like hell to get his Pakistan, and when he got it did not know what to do with it. Soon after he died.) But the Britannica had wider ambitions, and being a nation of shopkeepers and traders wanted to control but not bother with one more state to handle. So, after the Nizam and the Marathas had got their booty, the British gave what was left of the state to the King of Mysore, but kept a "resident" just to make sure they had a toehold in the kingdom. In 1831 the British got the opportunity to do their mischief. Claiming misrule, they deposed Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar and brought the Kingdom directly under the rule of the East India Company. 

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed in Britain and the Privy Council there ordered the East India Company to reverse the annexation of Mysore. Under the rendition of 1881, the state of Mysore was given back to the Wodeyar dynasty. So, Mysore history has four periods: The Wodeyar period, the Islamic period, the British period, and finally basic to the Wodeyars.

On the Mysore Anthem and Tagore

The Mysore anthem (Kayo Sri Gowri) was commissioned by  Maharaja Chamaraja Wodeyar to commemorate the rendition of 1881. In 1919, the Vice Chancelloe of Mysore University, a Bristol born alumnus of Balliol College (Oxford) and son of Brahmo parents who were social reformers, Sir Albion Rajkumar Banerjee, invited Tagore to visit Mysore. It was then that Tagore heard the Kayo Sri Gowri for the first time. As the article cited below says, "Tagore was impressed. He had already heard of the anthem several years before and realised that the lyrics are based on Raga- Dheerashankarābharanam. This raga is known as Bilawal in the Hindustani  and the Western equivalent is the C major scale, Ionian mode." Then Tagore went on the compose the Indian National anthem "Jana gana Mana".

Reference:

http://samharshbangalore.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-anthem-that-inspired-jana-gana-mana.html

On Churchill and India, US & Indian independence, and the Second World War.

For the past few weeks there has been a debate raging about Churchill & India, the role of United States in Indian Independence, and the second world war. Here are excerpts from my posts.

POST: Churchill was a very talented and dynamic individual ,although definitely a flawed one.He was an imperialist but that cannot alone be allowed to overshadow his tremendous other qualities.I have no defence for his callous disregard of the great Bengal famine but he had very many other sterling qualities and achievements to his credit .
First and foremost he did the right thing when he defied Hitler in world war 2 and united the nation behind him.He saved European civilisation from a dark age due to his timely resistance.He spoke out against Hitler when everybody INCLUDING the Labour Party was for giving the Germans a chance to rehabilitate themselves after the Versailles treaty which gave most informed people a guilt complex.
The support of King Edward should be commended as a liberal support of the right to marry irrespective of rank.At that time the Nazis had nothing to do with it .
Churchill was a daring and shrewd military strategist .He should be credited for building up the Royal Navy prior to World War I with the Queen Elizabeth class battleships which beat back the German surge and which Navy was able to blockade Germany to desperation in that war.It was correctly said that the C in C of the Royal Navy Sir Jellicoe was one man who could lose the war in an afternoon .As far as Gallipoli was concerned the initial concept ,which was Churchill's , was brilliant and everybody at that time felt the British would take Istanbul easily.Then Kitchener and the British cabinet changed the concept of the operation,made it a prolonged land battle and as Churchill was identified with the proposal he had to pay a political price.
Another of Churchill's brilliant ideas resulted in the battle tank.
In world war 2,Churchill's management of the war resulted in much less casualties than in the First World War and I admire the way the various campaigns and chiefly DDay assault was conducted .Obviously Churchill was not the only architect of those victories but undoubtedly he had a major role.
By his crafty declaration of war against the Japanese immediately after Pearl Harbour he got Hitler to declare war against the USA and made it easier for FDR to enter the war in Europe.
I found in his books a very shrewd military analyst as well.As they are very engrossing ,makes for good reading as well.
Let us therefore not indulge in what many in India are doing presently ,label a person by one event or occurrence ,and ignore his other facets.

MY RESPONSE: You grotesquely overstate the virtues of churchill. 

First churchill did what any self-respecting Englishman, and in fact any human being would have done. To call it the right thing to do is superfluous. 

To say that churchill "saved European civilization" is obscene. Britain would to this day be a Nazi colony if it did not get the full support of United States. Do you realise that the supreme commander of Allied forces was NOT a Briton but an American? This in spite of conniving by Field Marshal Montgomery.

Yes, one can call churchill shrewd. Many would call him cunning, fully exploiting the fact that his mother was American in begging thwe Americans to save them. As an American taxpayer I would have liked my government to send churchill the bill.

POST: Dear Mr Ganguly will reply in more detail after reading the links you have given.

In the meanwhile please consider that Hitler had offered enticingly peace proposals through various neutral countries in May 1940 as soon as the France fall became certain which Churchill rejected but others were still considering and I am not sure but Lord Halifax was one of them.So by no means "any self-respecting Englishman" would obviously do the right thing in a situation which everybody was saying was hopeless.Self-respecting Englishmen had nevertheless appeased Hitler and promised peace for our time ; they had fought a phoney war from September 1939 to May 1940;why was not the right thing obvious then ?
If Britain had not defied Germany in 1940 it would have become a. Colony of the Nazis that year ; if Germany had not fought Russia and had chipped away at the British Empire at the edges and weakened it and if USA had not come into the war ,it is possible that by 1944 Britain may have been weakened enough to succumb.But these are hypothetical scenarios against the certain one that in 1940 Churchill saved Britain for which he is rightly honoured.
As for the begging bowl bit let us also not forget that it was in USA's interest geopolitically to retain free and potentially friendly economies in Europe and not for Nazi Germany to dominate solely .Roosevelt realised this -he just did not intervene altruistically.
In 1940 Roosevelt did not have the political capital and support to declare war on Germany and if Britain had gone under he could have done nothing about it even though it was not in his long term interest .

Please further note that I always said that Churchill was not alone in the direction of the war.Due to the preponderance of American aid he had no choice but to be second fiddle .But whatever reading I have done has led me to the conclusion that he contributed a lot to the planning and execution.It was always politically decided that the commander for operation Overlord would be an American.
When the Americans ignored Churchill's pleas and did not take more areas in Germany as they very well could have in 1945 before the Russians got there the free world was the loser till 1989.

MY RESPONSE: I find it amazing that an empire over which sun did not set had to go down on knees before FDR. Like a cat with a large brood that hisses when encountering a larger animal, Britain (along with France) DECLARED war on Germany in 1939, knowing fully well that its enslaved colonies had no choice but to kowtow, and the fully independent dominions would follow suit. This bit of bravado (or bluff) was called out by Germany by soon extending the war over the Atlantic trade (the life blood of the merchant nation Britain).

You have the facts wrong. Hitler's overtures were rejected by Chamberlain, not churchill. In fact, Chamberlain observed then, "Past experience has shown that no reliance can be placed upon the promises of the present German Government." (see Wikipedia). It was upon this rejection that Hitler ordered war on France. Then Germany occupied Norway. The discontent in May 1940 over Norway forced Chamberlain out and churchill was in. The importance of the loss of Norway probably also had to do with the fact that Norway was probably the only country that then had the capability of producing heavy water. German scientists headed by Werner Heisenberg were then probably ahead of every one else in the development of nuclear weapons. (If you are interested, there is a very good movie on this, "The Heavy Water War") Heavy water is required for nuclear weapons.

Up to 1940 Britain was not fighting Germans; they were just hissing and puffing their cheeks. The scenarios you describe as hypothetical were not lost on the shrewd churchill. I wouldn't be surprised if they were just the scenarios that drove Churchill to beg FDR for help. But then the Americans were just becoming familiar with the Indian independence movement, and had received Gandhi's famous letter toi FDR asking for help.

Gandhi's letter to FDR hand delivered by Louis Fischer unequivocally concluded:

“The full acceptance of my proposal and that alone can put the Allied cause on an unassailable basis. I venture to think that the Allied declaration that the Allies are fighting to make the world safe for freedom of the individual and for democracy sounds hollow so long as India and, for that matter, Africa are exploited by Great Britain and America has the Negro problem in her own home. But in order to avoid all complications, in my proposal I have confined myself only to India. If India becomes free;, the rest must follow, if it does not happen simultaneously. In order to make my proposal foolproof I have suggested that, if the Allies think it necessary, they may keep their troops, at their own expense in India, not for keeping internal order but for preventing Japanese aggression and defending China. So far as India is concerned, we must become free even as America and Great Britain are. The Allied troops will remain in India during the war under treaty with the free Indian Government that may be formed by the people of India without any outside interference, direct or indirect.”

He went on to say:

"I have profited greatly by the writings of Thoreau and Emerson. I say this to tell you how much I am connected with your country. Of Great Britain I need say nothing beyond mentioning that in spite of my intense dislike of British rule, I have numerous personal friends in England whom I love as dearly as my own people. I had my legal education there. I have therefore nothing but good wishes for your country and Great Britain. You will therefore accept my word that my present proposal, that the British should unreservedly and without reference to the wishes of the people of India immediately with- draw their rule, is prompted by the friendliest intention. I would like to turn into goodwill the ill will which, whatever may be said to the contrary, exists in India towards Great Britain and thus enable the millions of India to play their part in the present war. My personal position is clear. I hate all war. If, therefore, I could persuade my countrymen, they would make a most effective and decisive contribution in favour of an honourable peace. But I know that all of us have not a living faith in non-violence, Under foreign rule however we can make no effective contribution of any 'kind in this war, except as helots." You can see the whole letter at https://research.archives.gov/id/7065056

As to hissing and puffing,

"The 3rd Infantry Division was deployed to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Realizing that the British and the French had little intention to invade Germany, Montgomery predicted a defeat should Germany decide to invade France, and trained his troops for tactical retreat, which paid off when the men of the 3rd Infantry Division effectively fell back toward the French coast. During Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British and French troops to the United Kingdom, he assumed command of the II Corps as Alan Brooke, the previous commanding officer, became the acting commander of the British Expeditionary Force. Upon his return to the United Kingdom in Jun 1940, he openly criticized the British Expeditionary Force leadership for the defeat, and was briefly relegated to divisional command, but was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath." (http://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=7)

"In the next month [September 1942], Montgomery started to receive great quantities of supplies from the United States, including large numbers of tanks. In Oct 1942, Montgomery decided that he was ready to launch Operation Lightfoot. On 23 Oct, the two forces engaged at the Battle of El Alamein, and 12 days later Montgomery achieved his decisive victory, capturing 30,000 Axis prisoners."

Montgomery convinced Eisenhower about Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands which was an utter failure. In fact after that Eisenhower removed Montgomery from the front and made him in charge of British Occupation Forces. I suppose his experience in India prepared him for that position.

On writing

One the most productive researcher in Operations Research I have met in my life once told me that he writes a page or two every day. When I asked him what he writes about, he said that he wrote about anything that came to mind. That often it was just an idea that just came to mind. Many of those pages written did not go anywhere, but the few that he pursued were gems.

I have tried that, but I am not disciplined enough, and so most of the ideas that come to my mind never see the light of the day.

When I was in junior high, my teachers required me to write a page every day. When I was doing my doctorate at Pittsburgh I took two courses from one of the most profoundly scholarly mathematical sociologist I have ever known. He required us to write essays about 4-5 pages EVERY week. Even today, after forty years I have every bit of paper I wrote in those courses, and I look at them every now and then. I look at all the red ink on these notes to realise that I will never be able to repay my debt to that professor. And over the decades almost every paper I have written has been influenced profoundly by what I learnt in those courses. None of the dozens of courses I took in my student days comes close in their impact on me.

Operations Research I have met in my life once told me that he writes a page or two every day. When I asked him what he writes about, he said that he wrote about anything that came to mind. That often it was just an idea
 that just came to mind. Many of those pages written did not go anywhere, but the few that he pursued were gems.

I have tried that, but I am not disciplined enough, and so most of the ideas that come to my mind never see the light of the day.

When I was in junior high, my teachers required me to write a page every day. When I was doing my doctorate at Pittsburgh I took two courses from one of the most profoundly scholarly mathematical sociologists I have ever known. He required us to write essays about 4-5 pages EVERY week. Even today, after forty years I have every bit of paper I wrote in those courses, and I look at them every now and then. I look at all the red ink on these notes to realise that I will never be able to repay my debt to that professor. And over the decades almost every paper I have written has been influenced profoundly by what I learnt in those courses. None of the dozens of courses I took in my student days comes close in its impact on me.

PS: I would be remiss if I did not name the professor. It is Professor Tom Fararo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Fararo).

On Deidre McCloskey's address at the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in 2012.

What a wonderful speaker Deidre McCloskey! Reminded me of JR Hicks who also was a stammerer. For an economist, I was amazed by her deep and remarkable understanding of statistics.
It was nice to hear about Gossett, perhaps the only human being who got along well with both Karl Pearson and R.A. Fisher, getting along with the latter itself a Herculean feat.
Gosset was helped in the mathematical derivation of small sample theory by Karl Pearson, he did not appreciate its importance, it was left to his nemesis R.A. Fisher. It is remarkable that he could work with these two giants who couldn't stand each other.
In later life Fisher and Gosset parted ways in that Fisher was a proponent of randomization of experiments while Gosset was a proponent of systematic planning of experiments and in fact proved decisively that balanced designs are more precise, powerful and efficient compared with Fisher's randomized experiments (see http://sites.roosevelt.edu/sziliak/files/2012/02/William-S-Gosset-and-Experimental-Statistics-Ziliak-JWE-2011.pdf ) 

I remember my father (who designed experiments in horticulture for a living) telling me the virtues of balanced designs at the same time my professors in school were extolling the virtues of randomisation. 

In Gosset we also find seeds of Bayesian thinking in his writings.  While I have always had a great regard for Fisher (visit to the tree he planted at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta was for me more of a pilgrimage), I think his influence on the development of statistics was less than ideal.

On Statistics and Philosophy

This is an exchange between Professor David Johnstone (University of Sydney) and I some time ago.

Jagdish Gangolly:
Your call for a dialogue between statistics and philosophy of science is very timely, and extremely important considering the importance that statistics, both in its probabilistic and non-probabilistic incarnations, has gained ever since the computational advances of the past three decades or so. Let me share a few of my conjectures regarding the cause of this schism between statistics and philosophy, and consider a few areas where they can share in mutual reflection. However, reflection in statistics, like in accounting of late and unlike in philosophy, has been on short order for quite a while. And it is always easier to pick the low hanging fruit. Albert Einstein once remarked, ""I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for the thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy".
1.
Early statisticians were practitioners of the art, most serving as consultants of sorts. Gosset worked for Guiness, GEP Box did most of his early work for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Fisher worked at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Loeve was an actuary at University of Lyon... As practitioners, statisticians almost always had their feet in one of the domains in science: Fisher was a biologist, Gossett was a chemist, Box was a chemist, ... Their research was down to earth, and while statistics was always regarded the turf of mathematicians, their status within mathematics was the same as that of accountants in liberal arts colleges today, slightly above that of athletics. Of course, the individuals with stature were expected to be mathematicians in their own right.
All that changed with the work of Kolmogorov (1933, Moscow State, http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~bskyrms/bio/readings/kolmogorov_theory_of_probability_small.pdf), Loeve (1960, Berkeley), Doob(1953, Illinois), and Dynkin(1963, Moscow State and Cornell). They provided mathematical foundations for earlier work of practitioners, and especially Kolmogorov provided axiomatic foundations for probability theory. In the process, their work unified statistics into a coherent mass of knowledge. (Perhaps there is a lesson here for us accountants). A collateral effect was the schism in the field between the theoreticians and the practitioners (of which we accountants must be wary) that has continued to this date. We can see a parallel between accounting and statistics here too.
2.
Early controversies in statistics had to do with embedding statistical methods in decision theory (Fisher was against, Neyman and Pearson were for it), and whether the foundations for statistics had to be deductive or inductive (frequentists were for the former, Bayesians were for the latter). These debates were not just technical, and had underpinnings in philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics (after all, the early contributors to the field were mathematicians: Gauss, Fermat, Pascal, Laplace, deMoivre, ...). For example, when the Fisher-Neyman/Pearson debates had ranged, Neyman was invited by the philosopher Jakko Hintikka to write a paper for the journal Synthese ( "Frequentist probability and Frequentist statistics", 1977).
3.
Since the early statisticians were practitioners, their orientation was usually normative: in sample theory, regression, design of experiments,.... The mathematisation of statistics and later work of people like Tukey, raised the prominence of descriptive (especially axiomatic) in the field. However, the recent developments in datamining have swung the balance again in favour of the normative.
4. Foundational issues in statistics have always been philosophical. And treatment of probability has been profoundly philosophical (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_interpretations).
____________________________________

David Johnstone:
In reply to your points: (1) the early development of statistics by Gossett and Fisher was as a means to an end, i.e. to design and interpret experiments that helped to resolve practical issues, like whether fertilizers were effective and different genetic strains of crops were superior. This left results testable in the real world laboratory, by the farmers, so the pressure to get it right rather than just publish was on. Gossett by the way was an old fashioned English scholar who spent as much time fishing and working in his workshop as doing mathematics. This practical bent comes out in his work.
(2) Neman’s effort to make statistics “deductive” was always his weak point, and he went to great lengths to evade this issue. I wrote a paper on Neyman’s interpretations of tests, as in trying to understand him I got frustrated by his inconsistency and evasiveness over his many papers. In more than one place, he wrote that to “accept” the null is to “act as if it is true”, and to reject it is to “act as if it is false”. This is ridiculous in scientific contexts, since to act as if something is decided 100% you would never draw another sample - your work would be done on that hypothesis.
(3) On the issue of normative versus descriptive, as in accounting research, Harold Jeffreys had a great line in his book, “he said that if we observe a child add 2 and 2 to get 5, we don’t change the laws of arithmetic”. He was very anti learning about the world by watching people rather than doing abstract theory. BTW I own his personal copy of his 3rd edition. A few years ago I went to buy this book on Bookfinder, and found it available in a secondhand bookshop in Cambridge. I rand them instantly when I saw that they said whose book it was, and they told me that Mrs Jeffreys had just died and Harold’s books had come in, and that the 1st edition was sold the day before.
(4) I adore your line that “Foundational issues in statistics have always been philosophical”. .... So must they be in accounting, in relation to how to construct income and net assets measures that are sound and meaningful. Note however that just because we accept something needs philosophical footing doesn’t mean that we will find or agree on that footing. I recently received a comment on a paper of mine from an accounting referee. The comment was basically that the effect of information on the cost of capital “could not be revealed by philosophy” (i.e. by probability theory etc.). Rather, this is an empirical issue. Apart from ignoring all the existing theory on this matter in accounting and finance, the comment is symptomatic of the way that “empirical findings” have been elevated to the top shelf, and theory, or worse, “thought pieces”, are not really science. There is so much wrong with this extreme but common view, including of course that every empirical finding stands on a model or a priori view. Indeed, remember that every null hypothesis that was ever rejected might have been rejected because the model (not the hypothesis) was wrong. People naively believe that a bad model or bad experimental design just reduces power (makes it harder to reject the null) but the mathematical fact is that it can go either way, and error in the model or sample design can make rejection of the null almost certain.

Alan Turing's contributions to Econometrics.

David Giles' blog on Econometrics is one of my most favourite blogs, and I read it all the time. And this blog on Turing is the most informative one from Giles.

 While I am quite familiar with Econometrics having overdosed on it in graduate school, and also am familiar with Turing's work in Computing, I didn't have the foggiest idea about Turing's contributions in Econometrics until I read this blog.

Proving the Central Limit Theorem, developing sequential analysis and LU decomposition for matrix inversion all developed before the age of 35! Turing was the Mozart of Computing, Statistics, and Mathematics.  Life was not kind to him.

It is tragic that I never heard of Turing when I was a Statistics/Mathematics  undergraduate back in the early sixties even though I did study CLT, sequential analysis as well as matrix inversion techniques. I became aware of his work in computing only in the 1970s when seeing the book "Introduction to the Theory of Sequential Machines" by Hartmanis and Stearns on the stacks in Hillman Library at Pitt piqued my interest enough to borrow and read it. A decade later it turned out that Stearns was a very senior colleague of mine at Albany; I was fortunate enough to sit in on his course on Game Theory, but unfortunate enough not to have worked with him.

I plan on watching the "Imagination Game" this weekend.

On Benford's Law and Accounting.

In my opinion it is not that Benford's law is over-rated, just that it is mechanically overworked with data in accounting. It is a very useful technique in accounting forensics and is in fact used extensively in practice.

It is our job as academics to provide a theoretical basis for its use rather than use it simply in a mechanical fashion. That is what people in other domains do. For example, parametric extensions of Benford's law have been shown to better approximate the behaviour of certain integer sequences (for example, prime numbers follow Benford's law asymptotically, but for smaller primes less than 10,000 they do not follow Benford's law at all but follow Pareto Benford law). Such extensions have been found to be useful in some domains. I can cite the following example among thousands that exist.

Dorp, J.R. van and S. Kotz (2002). The standard two-sided power distribution and its
properties : with applications in financial engineering. The American Statistician
56(2), 90-99.

Statisticians have looked at the problem from two different perspectives: 1. what are the common distributions that follow Benford's law (suggested by Theodore Hill in a paper in 1995), and 2. Find a process that generates Benfor'd compliant data. We in accounting need to ask the question what is the process that generates the data and then see under what conditions the data approximates Benford. My point is that most Benford studies in accounting I have seen (including the SSRN paper you sent the links to) have really no accounting content; they are merely mechanical application of Benford's law to accounting data.

And, most importantly, the discovery of the so-called Benford's law was not by Benford, but by the Canadian-American astronomer Simon Newcomb who, in 1881 in an article in the journal American Journal of Mathematics, expressed it as "The law of probability of the occurrence of numbers is such that all mantissae of their logarithms are equally likely".  Benford was only two years old when Newcomb wrote that paper. History has been rather cruel to Newcomb. (I am attaching to this message one of the best presentations of "Benford's" law I have seen).

Simon Newcomb not being remembered is probably his bad karma coming back to haunt him. He was a good friend of the Peirce family and in fact was a frequent guest at their house. However, he did not seem to like the Benjamin Peirce's son, one of my heroes Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce whom Bertrand Russell called "one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century, and certainly the greatest American thinker ever". The Santiago in his name was added to indicate CS Peirce's gratitude to his biggest supporter at Harvard, William James. Santiago is the Spanish for St. James.

Newcomb haunted CS Peirce most of his adult life and ensured that he did not succeed. When Peirce was up for tenure at Johns Hopkins and the president was about to sign his tenure,   Newcomb informed him that Peirce had lived and traveled with a woman who was not his wife (Peirce then was separated from his first wife but they were not divorced then; later they divorced and he married the lady). He was denied tenure. Later, towards the end of his life he had applied for a grant to publish his work to Carnegie Foundation, but was rejected, thanks to Newcomb who served on their board. Tragically, he spent much of his life in abject poverty, supported by his friends such as William James. John Dewey was a student of Peirce at Johns Hopkins.

Today, CS Peirce is revered around the world as one of the most profound philosophers, but Nwecomb is largely forgotten.  Provides some evidence that bad deeds do come back to haunt.
 

On Caste System

Recently, some one wrote on FaceBook:

"For the past few days, I have been noticing some friends uploading some posters on their walls seeking pride for the respective castes they belong to. The sentence remains the same; the name of the caste changes depending on who is seeking pride.

This is both sick and funny. In Indian history, every caste is found to have done something horrendous at some point of time that its members must be embarrassed about in this modern age. First, identifying with this unscientific classification is regression. Second, if you must relate to it, have the moral courage to own up your mistakes as well: from persecutions to capitulations to manipulations."

I do not see anything wrong in one celebrating success by any caste provided they also own the horrendous treatment of other castes, especially the downtrodden castes. For example, I am proud of my "caste"; I am a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin. We are a community of just about 20,000 world-wide, but have incredible achievements. One of us (Sir B Narsing Rao) was one of the drafters of the Indian Constitution. We have had four star generals and Air Chief Marshals (a distant uncle of mine), and we have had some of the finest Bollywood producers and directors. There are literally thousands of doctors, professors, engineers among us. It is virtually impossible to find among us non-college educated, and almost no one goes to bed hungry. That is certainly an achievement worth celebrating about.   

And yet I am ashamed of the way our temple musicians, who are usually of lower caste (so-called untouchables,  perform from outside the temple and yet are not allowed inside the temple. But then I am also very proud that my father treated everyone alike and even allowed the so-called untouchables inside our house even for food. That is the way I was brought up, to treat all human beings respectfully. That is worth celebrating too.

Caste system can peacefully and amicably coexist with decency and respect for each other if there is a will.

On Indian Independence.

It was FDR (Roosevelt) and the US that played the crucial part in the Indian independence movement. Churchill and Britain would not have let go of India even if they had to eat grass. USA also tolerated the Ghadar movement even though it impacted the one-sided so-called batshit "special relationship" with Britain. Indians should be eternally grateful to the US and President Roosevelt.

Read the following:
Source: http://east_west_dialogue.tripod.com/american_system/id10.html
___________________________
An eyewitness account of the struggle between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, over the fate of the post-war world is contained in the book by the President's son, Elliott Roosevelt, 'As He
Saw It,' (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Elliott Roosevelt was an aide to his father at all but one of the Big Three conferences during World War II. Elliott Roosevelt recounts how his father, the American President laid out his determination to shape a post-war world free of colonialism, and his perspective for the economic development of the former colonies to eradicate poverty and illiteracy.
The following are two excerpts from Elliott Roosevelt's book. The first is from a meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill at the Bay of Argentia, of the coast of Newfoundland. It was at this meeting where Roosevelt forced Churchill to sign the Atlantic Charter on August 14, 1941. This charter contained key aspects of Roosevelt's vision of the post-war world.
The first section is Elliott Roosevelt's account of the conference between Roosevelt and Churchill at Argentia Bay off Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter was signed at this meeting on Aug 14, 1941.
(It should be emphasized that Roosevelt is not promoting the British doctrine of free trade. Indeed the British only followed the free trade approach when it was to their benefit. The British Empire was based on monopolistic trading arrangements that enriched Great Britain and impoverished the colonies. Trade between British colonies and other countries was severely limited.)
Roosevelt and Churchill Meet in August 1941
It must be remembered that at this time Churchill was the war leader, Father only the President of a state which had indicated its sympathies in a tangible fashion. Thus, Churchill still arrogated the conversational lead, still dominated the after-dinner hours. But the difference was beginning to be felt.
And it was evidenced first, sharply, over Empire.
Father started it.
'Of course,' he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, 'of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade.'
He paused. The P.M.'s head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.
'No artificial barriers,' Father pursued. 'As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.' His eye wandered innocently around the room.
Churchill shifted in his armchair. 'The British Empire trade agreements' he began heavily, 'are--'
Father broke in. 'Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.'
Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. 'Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Dominions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers.'
'You see,' said Father slowly, 'it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.
'I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now--'
'Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?'
'Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation--by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.'
Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. Hopkins was grinning. Commander Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
'You mentioned India,' he growled.
'Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.'
'What about the Philippines?'
'I'm glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they've gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down....'
'There can be no tampering with the Empire's economic agreements.'
'They're artificial....'
'They're the foundation of our greatness.'
'The peace,' said Father firmly, 'cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples. Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade. Will anyone suggest that Germany's attempt to dominate trade in central Europe was not a major contributing factor to war?'
It was an argument that could have no resolution between these two men....
The conversation resumed the following evening:
Gradually, very gradually, and very quietly, the mantle of leadership was slipping from British shoulders to American. We saw it when, late in the evening, there came one flash of the argument that had held us hushed the night before. In a sense, it was to be the valedictory of Churchill's outspoken Toryism, as far as Father was concerned. Churchill had got up to walk about the room. Talking, gesticulating, at length he paused in front of Father, was silent for a moment, looking at him, and then brandished a stubby forefinger under Father's nose.
'Mr. President,' he cried, 'I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire. Every idea you entertain about the structure of the postwar world demonstrates it. But in spite of that'--and his forefinger waved--'in spite of that, we know that you constitute our only hope. And'--his voice sank
dramatically--'{you} know that {we} know it. {You} know that {we} know that without America, the Empire won't stand.'
Churchill admitted, in that moment, that he knew the peace could only be won according to precepts which the United States of America would lay down. And in saying what he did, he was acknowledging that British colonial policy would be a dead duck, and British attempts to dominate world trade would be a dead duck, and British ambitions to play off the U.S.S.R. against the U.S.A. would be a dead duck.
Or would have been, if Father had lived.

On College and grades

When I completed my masters degree I started working for  a large pulp and paper company (www.bilt.com). It was founded by one Karam  Chand Thapar
 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karam_Chand_Thapar), an Indian industrialist. The corporate folklore has it that while a student at the well-known Forman Christian College at Lahore Pakistan (http://www.fccollege.edu.pk/about) in undivided British India, he flunked five times in his sophomore year. Forman Christian College was then the equivalent of Harvard in South Asia. Its students went on to occupy the top positions in the industry, government, and education in South Asia.
Failing five times provided K.C. Thapar an incredible advantage; he came to know the students in five class years. That paid handsomely when he started his career (without a degree). He knew everybody in the industry and the government. He went on to create the Sugar, Pulp & Paper, Electronics, Banking, Coal, Chemical,... industries and was a billionnaire in an era when you could count billionnaires in India on one hand. His sons served on the Boards of universities including USC (one of his grandsons donated $1 million to SUNY Albany three years ago, I had nothing to do with that).
The reason I narrated the above story is to make a point that for the employment (and entrepreneurial) market the grades are absolutely irrelevant so long as you have the right address. The market does not need a finer signal than that you got in and that you have the backing of its enormous social network, and if you do not want to alienate any one, it is stupid to have grades at all. That is the reason why when I was at Claremont Colleges I used to joke that they should auction to the highest bidder their degrees once students were admitted.
Once the prestige is established what counts is that you got ion, and that you have the entire social network behind you. With that, it must be a miracle if you fail.

What matters is what you do when you succeed with or without Ivy education. Thapars were wonderful employers; I literally cried when I left them. They provided rent-free housing for all employees, provided schooling, college, and even had a university (http://www.thapar.edu/) for the employees along with others. The place IO worked at they even had a country club for the managerial employees. So I was not at all surprised when I heard that they were the first Indian company to gain ISO certification.

When my daughter got into an Ivy school (Brown) and other fancy schools, I advised her to go to a state school (University of California at San Diego) that did not have a football team and did not have a business school. She was not very happy then, but she did fine. This year she was nominated for an Emmy award in the news category for one of the news programs she produced.

Life is a wonderful cruise if you get into one of these schools, but making it without all that tail wind must be exhilarating and self-fulfilling.

On the compensation of Accounting faculty.

In my humble opinion, the demand for accounting PhDs is artificially created by AACSB and us the accounting faculty to keep the salaries high. Being a practice field, there should no reason why for most courses except for PhD pnce (it is questionable if most of them are accounting at all) a CPA is not adequate. At least the way accounting is taught presently.

As department chair I found it unconscionable that we paid more to accounting ABDs than what we paid senior faculty with stellar research records and prestigious awards (such as Guggenheim, Mcarthur genius,...). I hope one of these days some one calls our bluff. I can not accept that it is the "market", for the so-called market is a fake, a figment of our imagination created for our own aggrandizement.