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...