Reasoning: Association vs. Causation

I came across this concept in my Macro-Economics course about errors in reasoning in confusing association (or correlation) and causation.  The book concluded the following:

The fact that one event follows another does not necessarily mean that the first event caused the second event.

Association is where these two events occur, like voodoo dancing and stock market increases, and concluding that they are related.  Many people do this in their reasoning, especially in religious context, and it is flawed.  I know some people that do this with computers, and they struggle in building technical knowledge, because they build a lot of assumptions based on these associative reasoning.

Causation is when the cause-and-effect relationship is stable over time.  From a technical perspective, it would mean one can empirically prove the relationship, such as through a controlled environment.  It that is difficult to set up, at least document the consistent behavior.

So which side are you: Association or Causation?  Or are some things association and causation?

The SmartPhone Ecosystem: Why iPhones Will Succeed...

I spoke with an Adobe employee that's been around since 286 computers from long ago.  His case about Apple's iPhone and the Android was that the whole market is a completely different ecosystem compared to computers that competed for the cheapest price, where most consumers didn't care if the quality was good or not.   

Now in the current setting, the price point has crossed the threshold to make these devices affordable and in this setting consumers don't care so much about price, but rather quality.  My added 2¢ was that also the industrial design combined with good intuitive interaction design of the interface, makes Apple's iPhone not only market leader, but generates customer loyalty.

He added that for the Android, out of the 700,000 applications, the most popular application or the killer application is the "Advanced Task Killer Free", to essentially kill other applications running on the Android.  I have to agree with that.

Why iPhone Will Fail?

I think the iPhone is the best product out there, due to intuitive interaction design and eloquent industrial design of the product.  Using a perspective on Larry Keeley's model for product design in looking the dimensions of Capability (Engineering), Viability (Business Management), and Desirability (Interaction Design), it is obvious why Apple is a success.  Customers use the product not just fulfill a need, but the customers really enjoy (desire) using the product, which generates customer Loyalty to the point of becoming product zealots.

However, Apple's tight vertical integration (hardware, software, development tools, application distribution channel) for the sake of quality cannot compete in the marketplace.  Why?  The resources of Apple alone cannot compete with the resources of the world marketplace for hardware components, should they all start using a single operating system, such as Android.

Hardware advances require economy of scale to create the next generation of processors and other components and the factories that produce them.  Should the other phone and smart device companies choose a single operating system, e.g. Android, then Apple has to compete with the research and development resources of combined companies.  The combined industry resources has a higher economy of scale than that of Apple.

What will happen is a replay of the PC Clone market vs. Macintosh.  Apple's solutions did what they say in marketing is market cannibalization.  Because the operating system only runs on one hardware, and the hardware runs only one operating system, both products loose market share.  In the PC Clone market, there were a many operating systems that could run on many different clones,  The sheer scale of this market muscle eventually closed the gap between Macintosh's advantage, e.g. high-end video cards in desktop publishing, and then leap-frogged the Macintosh platform.  Eventually, Macintosh was a an overpriced under-performer in the 1990s (around the time of Macintosh Quardras and Macintosh PowerPCs). Other operating systems, e.g. Windows, could sell to like 96% of the market, while the Macintosh OS was limited to  sell to about 3% of the market at one point.

Simply, the strategy for tight vertical integration will fail because of the (one) need to achieve economy of scale in hardware electronics and (two) artificial limitation of market, market cannibalization by design, of Apple's superior operating system.  Also, smart-phones and other computers cannot mimic the market of luxury clothing and be sustainable, due to the current aggregate costs of research and development needed to make such devices.

My recommendation or solution would be to partner companies like Nokia and Motorola and get them to make hardware devices that meet Apple's required level of quality, and allow them to compete in the marketplace.  In order to assure quality of application software, Apple should start a logo certification program to certify that applications were made in the desired way (using Apple's tools) but open the door for third party innovations.  The technical support should be limited to a clean system with only certified programs.  Lastly, a bit technical, but engineers will understand: utilize hashing algorithm to authenticate their certification, and show a warning for other applications (which could be shut off only through extreme technical types).

Are College Prerequisites Legitimate?

For a long time I felt that the prerequisites at SFSU had more to do with controlling the flow of where students go than any legitimate academic reasons.  Honestly, for an introductory computer course, do we really need Statistics?  

I'm sure, there'll be bombastic explanations to justify the cause for this complex maze of prerequisites.  However, anyone with a brain can discern that many of these prerequisites are frivolous.  

There will be some that are plausible and needed prerequisites, such as ACCT 100 before ACCT 101.  Though, that's more of the exception that the rule in what's going on here.

Just looking this graphic, anyone can look at the complexity of all these prerequisites at SFSU.  I can count 25 connections needed between courses.  

In contrast, I looked at another program, such as American Business School in Paris, which students can participate through a study abroad with SFSU.  Their program is different, but if I match up the courses that are the same in both institutions, there would be only 9-11 connections required by ABS.  Here's two graphics, one with SFSU course numbers, and another one with ABS course numbers:

(Note: Regarding second graphic, off-topic, SFSU's FIN 350 are broken into two courses in ABS, and SFSU's MGMT 405 is also broken up.  Though students that do a study abroad only have to take FIN 210 and MGT 210 respectively for equivalents. Speak with advisor regarding this)

SFSU Prerequisite Maze

Navigating which courses to take and what are the prerequisites can be difficult, so I crafted my own guide to help myself, and maybe others through the maze of courses.  I made a visual guide and checklist, useful for both sides of the brain.

I published a document online: https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1n2Syuv2pIHZjg0Y2Q2ODAtODA4OS00NDY2LWJmNjctZjJhZTBiZDMyZTUx&hl=en

Should I stay or Should I go?

I have to make some hard decisions about where and when to take courses: abroad or locally.  I wish to travel to Hong Kong and Paris through study abroad, but I need to take some lower division courses at the community college in additionally to upper division at my home university, SFSU.

On the staying side, I could become more economically secure (jobs in USA), more prepared (needed prerequisite courses for the advance courses abroad), and brush up on my language skills (Chinese and French).

On the going abroad, I am at a loss of positives except that I can finish up my education a lot sooner, and when I return, I'll spend a semester wrapping things up, improving GPA, and preparing for Masters program.  I also get an amazing experience with excellent industry aligned courses if I go early.  There's a risk that the programs might change if I delay.

To mitigate the issues mentioned above, I could take courses online in the summer, secure financial aid for community college summer studies.  Additionally, I can save up enough to enroll in a language program in either Paris or Hong Kong (something with the institution directly for reasonable price), or alternatively maybe Portugal as language program is only € 700 and the rent is quite affordable.  

Scripting Segue

At San Francisco State, all courses transferred and all courses applied to your major are tracked in a DARS report.  It's really powerful and intuitive tool to help you assess your academic standing.  The problem though arises when you have a ton of courses transferred from different institutions, it gets quite messy and time consuming.

I thought that this should be a good solution to practice scripting in Perl, and so I embarked and after about 3 days of on and off coding, I perfected my script.  It takes the DARS report from its web format (HTML), filters, sorts, and outputs the result into a format usable in an Excel spreadsheet.

In the end of the endeavor, I found that the totals in the Unofficial Transcript (another report that actually shows your GPA) was accurate.  But now I know precisely how much effort is needed to nudge up my GPA, and I can toy with projections on a Spreadsheet.

If any other business students do these types of activities, I'll be surprised.  Ultimately though, the gain from all this is that my skills are sharper...

Corporatism

In my studies at Yonsei (ISM 2107 Politics and Business in Korea), and recently at a course I took on the side POLS 18 Government and Politics of Latin America at CCSF, I have often come across this term called corporatism. 

I'm like what exactly is this?  So, during class, I looked up the definition on my Android, and found the Wikipedia entries as defined by political scientist:

• corporatism (political scientist definition) - the process of licensing and regulation by a state for incorporating social, religious, economic, or popular organizations into a single collective body.
• state corporatism (political scientist definition) - states co-opt business leadership, or circumscribe the ability to challenge state authority by establishing organizations as the source of their legitimacy, or by governing the state through corporations.

In Latin American politics, the general term is used, but in East Asian politics, particularly Korea, the state-corporatism definition is used when referring to the term.  Wikipedia also lists these definitions:

• corporatism - system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism)
• state corporatism - a political culture which is a form of corporatism whose adherents hold that the corporate group which is the basis of society is the state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_corporatism)

However, of all the terms, I have to love Apple's Dictionary on Mac OS X, which lists:

• corporatism - the control of a state or organization by large interest groups.

Holland's Hexagon

I was digging through my notes and found this scrap of paper for a course I took at Foothill (CLRP 70 Self Assessment).  On the scrap was this theory RIASEC Theory or Holland's Hexagon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIASEC). This represents six distinct personality types and potential matching careers for those personality types.  There's a relation between people and their environment, and when they are working in the environment, they can get the most enjoyment from their job.

In reading one website, called the Career Key (http://www.careerkey.org/asp/your_personality/hollands_theory_of_career_choice.html#twist), they noted that most people are multiple types,  and should find compatible careers, where the job involves related job types (that is to the left or right of the hexagon angle). 

Given that many new jobs these days are requiring cross-field experience, such as project management with technology (software engineering or information technology), this might be important to evaluate personality types for the best match.

Marketing Orientation and VMWare

One company that was always a pioneer in the market space of virtualization is VMWare.  I have been a user of their VMWare Workstation products, and on the Macintosh, a user of VMWare Fusion.  Recently, the latest version of the Mac version, Fusion 3.0, is riddled with bugs, loss of features from previous version, and degraded performance.  They did a major overhaul in with recent bug fixes, but I'm still seeing many bugs.

At the trade show MacWorld, I dropped by the VMWare booth, and all I found there were mostly sales or marketing that know the basics about the product.  I asked one to demonstrate a stable feature, dragging items from the desktop in Windows to Mac, in front of an audience, and much to his chagrin, the feature didn't seem to work.

This got me to thinking, is VMWare disconnected from the customer.  I recall long ago that there were technical people that attended trade shows, but now I am seeing those that make the product so far removed with what seems layers of management.  I can only guess, as I don't work there, but if the severe, what I personally feel, is misalignment in customer requirements for their 3.0 release combined with quantity and severity of bugs in the release, I have to consider there's something amiss at VMWare.

So I did some sleuthing on the Internet and found this at my first glance:

• Inside Scoop at VMWare from GlassDoor: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/VMware-Reviews-E12830.htm
• Articles Loss of Key People:
• http://www.siliconbeat.com/2008/09/09/vmware-co-founder-calls-it-quits-shares-hit-lowest-since-ipo/
• http://virtualization.info/en/news/2008/09/mendel-rosenblum-co-founder-and-chief.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/technology/09vmware.html
• http://virtualization.info/en/news/2008/07/vmware-loses-its-ceo.html
• http://virtualization.info/en/news/2008/09/vmware-loses-r-executive-vice-president.html

What the Hell is Market Oriented

In the Marketing class that I took at Yonsei (BIZ1102 Marketing in Fall 2008 taught by Dr. Seigyoung Auh) I came across this concept of Market Oriented.  This is where the marketing is incorporatied horizontally across an organization and where every function has an understanding of the customer.  This is quite different that many companies that segregate and isolate people into functional groups like marketing, sales, finance, engineering, etc.  and use serial communication, which is like throwing a brick over a wall with a message attached.

The article that was amazing, problably required reading for every good marketing class is: What the Hell Is "Market Oriented"? by Benson P. Shapiro, found in the Harvard-Business-Review in Nov-Dec 1988 edition:

• http://hbr.org/1988/11/what-the-hell-is-market-oriented/ar/1

This article is absolutely timeless, and I see countless examples of companies that are so disconnected from the customer, such as excluding developers and software quality assurance from attending trade shows.  Many times I have gone to conventions, and dealt with those that either don't care about the development or quality of a product they are trying to sell, or they simply do not have the knowledge or connections to enact change that could improve a product.

The Missing Link is Design

Ever since I was a child I was creating huge theme parks, designing businesses, imagining huge systems. Active imagination is good, because you can discern how to use what you learn. There's a certain finesse in creating things, works of art in any profession.

As I navigate between the roads of technology and business, modeling ideas and design architectures I am discovering are sought after skills, and this is my core talent. And I came across a book that puts it all together, the proverbial missing link.

This is The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive US Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper. Here he shows how many of the things I'm learning in my business college are obsolete, as far as accounting and operational systems that are oriented toward manufacturing and come from the industrial era long ago. Now we are on a new age, the Information Age, and these outdated old models don't work. In any event, this is a fun read, definitely challenges one's way of thinking to accept a new way, and learn about delivering products that people not only need, but actually enjoy to use.

Segment III GE in South Korea

In a California State University, you have to take general education curriculum to get an undergraduate degree.  These are divided into three segments, where Segment I and II can be completed at the community college.  Segment III, is upper division only, meaning the junior and senior years of one's education.  Segment III requires three courses covering culture, ethnic, and social diversity.

Well, what better way to get "culture, ethnic, and social diversity" than to travel to the actual country!  At SFSU, you can fulfill this requirement through a study abroad: http://www.sfsu.edu/~studyabr/CSUIPandSFStateBilateral/CSUIPAndSFStateBilateral.html.

So this is what I did, I traveled to Korea, and I had an amazing experience in not only understanding Korean culture (as it's changing and evolving), but also understanding American culture.  I also developed stronger research and analytical skills, and gained a deeper perspective into a fields of business, economics, anthropology as well as culture, politics, and history within East Asian region and how it relates to the developing changes in the world at large. 

Now, I can officially check this part of my requirements off, and open the door to new opportunities in life from this new understanding I gained in life from my voyage to Korea.

Information Technology and Beyond

I was indeed hoping to learn more about Information Technology for my four year education.  However, I am not bothered by the absence of this at San Francisco State University.  This because I have learned what is needed for Information Technology through books, community college courses, and experience.  The business side of the equation is so involved, that I really have enough on my plate for now.

If anyone would wish to learn specifically IT, they'll have to gain hard skills through books, certification courses, or more economically through a local community college in areas of Microsoft Certification, Red Hat Linux, Cisco's CCNA, etc.  There's so many skills where students can get exposure.  Ultimately though, most of the education is from tinkering with the computer, trying out scripts, playing with equipment.  

For more business side of skills, I think ITIL would be the biggest area of study that is essential to Information Technology.  The U.S. Department of Defense is really into this system, and I imagine it will become quite popular.  The problem is that, I really do not know where to learn this material, other than professional certification schools. 

Obstacle Course in Education

In any public institution, there are bountiful barriers, whether from regimented rules parroted by mindless drones to non-sense stemming from things like ego and politics.  And most certainly, at San Francisco State, there's no deficit of these issues.  Yet still, there's plenty of opportunities if you can keep focused and not just  simply scrape by, getting a good grade without learning anything.  

A good friend of mine told me these barriers are put in place for the "other people".  Those that work around these, go through these, can get places in life, but for those that don't  apply themselves and don't work through barriers (especially self-created ones) have to get comfortable with settling for less in life.

I intend to make the most of my education, both in what the professors have designed or designated I should learn, and also in the material needed in the industry at large, that is, real concrete business and technical skills related to Information Systems.  This may mean I have to get education outside of SFSU, at a sister college, through professional training, or through a study abroad...

System Administration under Computer Science?

As a new student looking into the Information Systems program at SFSU, I was surprised to  find technical IS courses offered under the the computer science department (CSC) and not Information Systems department.

Namely there was one particular course that stood out and that's CSC 651: System Administration.

This is the following course description:

User administration. Operating system installation, tuning, and control. Network administration. Security management. Performance tuning and management. Extra fee required.

(reference: http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/courses/35184.htm)

Obviously, this type of course would be within IT and should not require extensive math, and computer programming education. 

The chain of prerequisites for this course are 7 courses: CSC 210, CSC 212, CSC 213, CSC 313, MATH 226, MATH 227, and MATH 324.  Alternatively, students can take this type of course at any number of community colleges in California without the prerequisites or excessive costs involved to take this at SFSU.

Difference between IT and IS?

Following up on the enigma of Information Systems at San Francisco State, I spoke with Dr. Beckman, a really awesome professor here, especially in lectures, vast knowledge, good attitude and charisma, and strong professionalism, both as a professor, and coupled strong industry experience.

So, what is the difference between IT (Information Technology) and IS (Information System)?

Essentially information systems are all the technologies used by an organization to control and manage information, which includes people, data, and policies.  Information technologies, however, refer to the actual technologies used to control and manage information, which includes the hardware, software, and networks used in the information systems.

Information Systems teaches both IS and IT with the focus more oriented toward IS.  As the actual technologies vary from one organization to another, SFSU should not focus strictly on one technology or another.  Specifically, in a course ISYS 464 Managing Enterprise Data, taught by Dr. Beckman, the foucs is not on any particular brand of database, and is oriented toward database design. Students that complete ISYS 464 could reasonably apply for a job labeled as "Database Designer", but not for a job labeled "Database Administrator".  The former is not generally tied to a particular technology whereas the latter definitely is.

(Note: Used actual quotes that are in highlighted text as the material is described so succintly)

Cannot Learn IT at SFSU?

I had a good discussion with David Chao about learning IT at SFSU.  Essentially from what I understood, is that IT is too technical in scope for an undergraduate degree in ISYS (Information Systems) at SFSU.  An ISYS undergraduate program would be more focused on light application development, such as dragging buttons onto a sheet to design a user interface and maybe connect user interface to a back end database, or some light web programming with something like PHP. 

Given that this is only one professor's view and also the fact that he teaches these particular courses, his scope is understandably narrow.  I would be curious to explore views from other faculty about Information Systems at San Francisco State University.

Quality of Education at California State

I don't want to be cynical, but I think the quality of 4-year education has sunk to an all time low in USA.  I am now attending SFSU as a business major.  In my courses, I see gross generalizations, over simplification, and general lack of objectivity.  The overall curriculum in Information Systems, touches some conceptual material, but fails to prepare students with hard skills like system administration.

I learned that the emphasis of an undergraduate degree is suppose to be general concepts.  Thus subjects like Economics and History are great for those wishing to pursue a law degree, or other topics like Philosophy and Politics are also good foundation concept courses for a variety of graduate studies.

For those pursuing only an undergraduate degree, trying to acquire skills for employment, the quality  of material covered is of questionable quality. An undergraduate degree, for example, in something like Information System, is woefully inadequate for industry, unless combined with material beyond the courses taught at SFSU.

One course that was particularly disturbing is BUS 360 Business Communication.  This course has been completely automated on the Aplia system.  The topics covered are basic communication skills that were taught in grade school, such as writing a business letter, and remedial English grammar.  The information is so general that anyone without experience, including my Chinese roommate, can easily score over 80% taking the online exam.  As an active mind wanting to learn, I feel this course is a waste of money, but required to get that eventual degree.  I will have to pursue acquiring this knowledge outside of SFSU, such as an extension course, community college, or elsewhere.

Some instructors don't seem particularly bothered about the course or its content. One professor commented about another course being automated by Aplia, where a colleague wanted to have her own final.  He jokingly remarked, why have academic integrity there, if you don't have it elsewhere in the course, just go all the way and have the final online and automated.

I think though I am beginning to understand why professors, and more especially the administrators are not concerned.  Simply put, the public universities are not here to teach.  Yes, you heard me correctly, their goal is not here to teach.

Public institutions are accredited and recognized for their research, not for educating students. In fact, any transparent measurement that would determine how successful universities are at teaching is blocked politically through wealthy lobbying groups in Washington.

The students purpose at the university is to be cropped, so that the universities can shovel more money for themselves, giving administrators raises, and feeding unions with incompetent staff (who aren't measured in their ability to perform their duty) while at the same time, increasing tuition expenses at outrageous staggering amounts.  The costs of a university education has even outpaced the rising costs in health care by 63% (1983 to 2007).  I found a lot of haunting facts about this in a great article that illustrates the failures of our public American universities is That Old Education Lie by Kevin Carey.

Life at SFSU: Community College Better?

It has been interesting to re-integrate into back into USA and attend SFSU (San Francisco State University), especially after the budget cuts.  SFSU has restricted double majors and minors, so that all business students can no longer double major or take a minor.  There is a scramble for students desperately trying to get in their courses with many students unable to graduate.

I am still learning about the college of business and the university.  In my transition from community college to a state college, I am finding that the community college seem to be better than the state.  Yes that is strange.

Overall, the resources at the community college seem more efficient and well organized with modern labs and new computers.  At state, we have 15 year old computers that are constantly being scavenged, and this was before the budget cuts. Resources for disability, tutoring, language labs, math labs, etc, are more robust at the community college level, and seem non-existent or limited at the state level.  And the quality of the courses available at the community college just seems better, especially with more range of teachers to select from and smaller classes.  The content of some elective courses, at least within Information Systems, is rather limited or introductory.  At SFSU, the College of Business does not have even a systems administration course for Information Systems.  The community colleges have more robust advance courses, where students can learn skills that are directly applicable to a job.

Spoken Languages of the World

So in my IBUS 330 course (International Business) at SFSU, this one book¹ lists the top languages as of 2000: Chinese, Mandarin (874 mil), Hindi (365 mil), English (341 mil), Spanish (322 mil), Bengali (207 mil), Arabic (198 mil), Portuguese (176 mil), Russian (167 mil), Japanese (125 mil), and German (100 mil).

I went ahead and check the source², and found the following: Chinese, Mandarin (845 mil), Spanish (329 mil), English (328 mil), Arabic Languages (16 different languages) (221 mil), Hindi (182 mil), Bengali (181 mil), Portuguese (178 mil), Russian (144 mil), Japanese (122 mil), and German (90 mil).

Interesting thing how many in the USA, including the authors of the text book¹, treat Arabic as one standard spoken language, when in reality there are various indigenous languages that are related to Arabic.  I heard through other students, that standard Arabic is learned as a second language.  This seems similar to how Latin is related to Romance languages of French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and many others languages spoken in Europe.

References

• Cavusgil, Tamer, Gary Knight, and John Risenberger. “The Cultural Environment of International Business”. International Business: Strategy, Management, and the New Realities. Prentice Hall, 2007
• Etnologue: Languages of the World by SIL INternational: http://www.ethnologue.com