Sunday, November 10, 2019

The Curious Case of Apple, Twitter and Joseph Tieffenthaler



 Image result for apple logo

Apple has regained the title of the ‘World’s Most Valuable Listed Company’. The surge in the stock from $157.92 to $260.14 makes up of $ 398 Billion dollars in value, year to date in 2019 and that’s like the entire market cap of JP Morgan Chase & Co (408.93 Bn to be precise as of 7:28 PM, (GMT) November 10, 2019)
Their services arm has brought $46 Billion of revenue YTD, and they do understand that services are less cyclical, pregnant with higher margins. Products can’t keep the match of services. The replacement cycle has slowed down because the prices of smartphones have exceeded. They are on par with some of the good laptops in the market. People are waiting for 5G update. And the reasons may just pile up. 


Their sincere attention for services domain may be exhibited by this timeline:

August 2019: Apple Card - The cashback (3-2-1) Model, wide acceptance of the payment mode across US Retail stores, and the embedded safety features have really been appreciated. The mode doesn’t share the actual credit card number to the retailer, but it shares a device number generated specific to your iPhone device.

September 2019: Arcade - Video game subscription service

November 2019: Apple TV Plus - It is an over-the-top ad-free subscription video-on-demand web television service. Their move of letting apple device owners (purchased after Sept 10: The very concise terms and condition may be read here: https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/EN_US_ATV+_Promo_TandCs.pdf
) use the service free for a year is definitely going to entice users to continue watching, and for some to eventually pay for a subscription, as new series are released. Though made on a whopping budget of $ 300 Million, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell starrer ‘The Morning Show’ received mixed to negative reviews. 

Their recent iPhone launch, Tim Cook announcing that the iPhone 11 is the best-selling iPhone of all time, the launch of new air pods are a few of the other stuffs that we have not covered here. But there is a nice video which clearly explains as if what makes 

“Perfect, well-built Apple Product.” 
What’s meant by that? 
Now, this is something I would really encourage you to watch. This is a video review from Dave Lee. What is the core competency of wireless earphones? Sound & Noise cancellation. Sony wf 1000XM3 is better in both of terms to Apple Airpods Pro. But in the end, Dave calls the pro as a better product. This sums up the real tangible aspect of user experience, and I hope that the video serves the intention. 






Twitter



After a series of tweets in which Jack Dorsey banned the political advertisement, it put Facebook on the back foot. The reason behind so was the stand that Facebook had earlier taken and expressed openly about Political Advertisements. Now it’s not the matter of revenue as Twitter draws only 0.8 percent from this particular type of advertisement while Facebook mentioned that $ 3 million dollars are their share in this. The timings are also crucial because Twitter expressed the same almost as close to Facebook, announcing their Quarter Earning reports. Twitter even took a dig at Mark in one of his following tweets banning political advertisement. He didn’t take name but made statements in the quote : 

For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want! ðŸ˜‰
Though Facebook had a strong third-quarter earnings report. The report may be accessed here: 






The legal case that made India skip her breath

Mr. Tieffenthaler: According to the wiki, Joseph Tiefenthaler (or Tieffenthaler or Tieffentaller) (27 August 1710 – 5 July 1785) was a Jesuit missionary and one of the earliest European geographers to write about India. His accounts became one of the decisive evidence for one of the most important legal battles of Indian History. We all know the results and outcome of this case, but here are 13 major points that one should know:

1.     The five-judge Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi read out a unanimous judgment and ruled in favor of the Ram Janmabhoomi and said there will be Ram Mandir at the disputed site and Muslims will be given an alternate 5-acre land for their mosque.
2.     The waqf board argued that the land has been with a certain community for a long time, and based on ‘Doctrine of Adverse Possession’, it should be granted to them. But it was dismissed, stating that the possession was never uninterrupted or undisputed. 
3.     The Court agreed based on evidence provided by ASI that Babri Masjid was not made on vacant land but on a structure that is of non-Islamic nature. Though, if that structure was destroyed or demolished to make way for Masjid has not been discussed or talked about at any point. 
4.     The court didn’t go much into Righteousness Science / Dharma- Shashtra, unlike the Triple Talaq case. 
5.     The court considered Lord Ram as a juristic person and dismissed the point if the birthplace can also be a juristic person. You may read it here for further details: https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/india/how-birthplace-of-deity-can-be-juristic-person--asks-sc.html
6.     Second longest proceedings in history (40 days in total from August 6- October 16). The longest proceedings were of 68 days in the landmark Keshvanand Bharti Case. 
7.     The traveler's account of Father Joseph Tieffenthaler and Montgomery Martin gave detailed accounts of “faith and belief of the Hindus”. Those were taken into account. 
8.     Nirmohi Akhara claims were rejected as their suit was outside the prescribed period of limitation and is barred.
9.     The temple destroyed dates back to the reign of Vikramaditya.
10.  Extraordinary powers under Article 142 were exercised. The demand for 5 acres of land was not even asked. If there are similar cases of title suit, shall the court exercise it again to award the other party? The answer is perhaps No. A similar action was taken because of the extraordinary backdrop of the case. 
11.  The land was not given to any organization or any party but Lord Rama himself, and he was considered as a juristic person. 
12.  A similar kind of suggestion was suggested in the report drafted by the mediation team, too and a certain section believed that their report may have been taken into consideration while delivering the judgment. 
13.  The surplus 67 acres of the land hold by the Central Government have been released, which would mean that the development would take place in almost 70 acres of land for the temple.


Few other points:

Things to know: "doctrine of adverse possession", under which a person who is not the original owner becomes the owner because of the fact that he has been in possession of the property for a minimum of 12-years, within which the real owner did not seek legal recourse to oust him. 

Now, these are few comments that were made in the press conference of All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Mr. Zafaryab Jilani was addressing the conference for most of the part, and then he defended his argument of going for a review petition in the following words: 

“There are a dozen cases in which the Supreme Court has reviewed their judgments. We will never say or do Anything that will fall upon the dignity of the court.  We always have paid respect to the judgments and we have faith in the institution. To disagree with the same is our right. It has been the right of the nation” 

In the press conference, a lady asked this question

Zilani Sahab, You are Indian first and then a Muslim. Why you all are pressing so much for a masjid that has been constructed by Babur knowing that Babur was an invader. 
Mr. Zilani responds to that as:

1.     Once Mosque is created, it does belong to God, and we have nothing to do with Babur
2.     Is one has so much problem with the name of Babur, we even mentioned that the mosque can be named after Lord Rama
3.     There is already a mosque in Lucknow called Shivalaya Masjid. 

The final Supreme Court report may be read here: https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf

References:

6.      



Curious Case of Apple Inc









Apple has regained the title of the ‘World’s Most Valuable Listed Company’. The surge in the stock from $157.92 to $260.14 makes up of $ 398 Billion dollars in value, year to date in 2019 and that’s like the entire market cap of JP Morgan Chase & Co (408.93 Bn to be precise as of 7:28 PM, (GMT) November 10, 2019)
Their services arm has brought $46 Billion of revenue YTD and they do understand that services are less cyclical, pregnant with higher margins.

Their sincere attention for services domain may be exhibited by this timeline:


August 2019: Apple Card - The cashback (3-2-1) Model, wide acceptance of the payment mode across US Retail stores and the embedded safety features have really been appreciated. The mode doesn’t share the actual credit card number to the retailer but it shares a device number generated specific to your iPhone device.

September 2019: Arcade - Video game subscription service


November 2019: Apple TV Plus - It is an over-the-top ad-free subscription video-on-demand web television service. Their move of letting apple device owners(purchased after Sept 10) use the service free for a year is definitely going to entice users to continue watching, and for some to eventually pay for a subscription, as new series are released.


Thursday, October 24, 2019

Understanding the Nobel Prize Winning Experiment | Blog | Abhijeet Banerjee




Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, MIT economists whose work has helped transform antipoverty research and relief efforts, have been named co-winners of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, along with another co-winner, Harvard University economist Michael Kremer. 
This is a great moment for all of us as we all cherish and are congratulating the professor for such a remarkable achievement. Being from India, having studied from Presidency college, and having been to JNU gives you hope that an Indian student can go a long shot. I feel that it gives you the courage to dream for things never imagined or never attained before.

The couple talked to the media at an event organized by MIT, after the awards were declared. A very interesting question came from a gentleman which I wouldn't have dared to ask, given that I would have got the opportunity to attend that event. You may say fear of asking or something else but the question was as simple as it could get. 

"What you did exactly?" asked the gentleman in his conclusion. You could hear a few giggling in the background.

Esther Dulfo took the opportunity and explained it in a very lucid and remarkable manner. That intrigued me to look more into the same, and here is the summary of the part of the work they undertook and which everyone should be familiar with.

Caution:  It’s a long article and feel anytime to skip. 

In India, immunization services are offered free in public health facilities, but, despite rapid increases, the immunization rate remains low in some areas. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), in India only 44% of children aged 1-2 years have received the basic package. That drops to 22% in rural Rajasthan, the setting of the present study, and was less than 2% in our study area (a disadvantaged population in rural Udaipur).

They were trying to understand the reason behind the immunization rate being so low in parts of India. Their work has been explained in a very lucid manner in the paper “Improving Immunization Coverage in Rural India: A Clustered Randomized Controlled Evaluation of Immunization Campaigns with and without Incentives” published on MIT website. 

So, what was the problem?

1.     The immunization services were not reliable. Nurses and government officials were not discharging their duty consistently. You travel to vaccinate your child, you reach the PHC to find it closed and you return having the sense that it wasted significant time of yours. 
2.     Immunization is something that is never on the top of the priority. Families are busy with many works, and if they don’t vaccinate their child this month, there’s always a chance to do the same in the next one. It’s not a kind of an emergency. The opportunity cost may be too high for the families, even if it’s low. 
So, they teamed up with an NGO called Seva Mandi, and they asked the state government if they can replace them in certain areas of Rajasthan for providing the specific immunization services that the government machinery was already providing. 134 villages were randomly selected, and mentioned interventions were made to test the impact. This sort of trial is known as Randomized Control Trial in which you try to understand if one factor is affecting the other in a pre-conceptualised way or not. This was what Esther Duflo said. Though the Wikipedia page defines the same in a more systematic manner as "A randomized controlled trial is a type of scientific (often medical) experiment that aims to reduce certain sources of bias when testing the effectiveness of new treatments; this is accomplished by randomly allocating subjects to two or more groups, treating them differently, and then comparing them with respect to a measured response. 

Intervention A: It focused on establishing regular availability of immunization schedule, which meant that attendance of the nurse and assistant were closely monitored. The timings and schedule were declared ahead; the mothers were educated on the importance/benefits of immunization. In short, all those works done by the pre-existing government machinery were being executed at a high level of efficiency. 
Intervention B: It used the same infrastructure as Intervention A but in addition offered parents 1 kg of raw lentils per immunization administered and a set of thalis (metal plates used for meals) on completion of a child’s full immunization. The value of the lentils was about 40 rupees (about $1), equivalent to three quarters of one day’s wage, and the value of the thalis was about 75 rupees. Seva Mandir (It is a grassroots NGO based in Udaipur, in the Rajasthan state of India; works mainly in natural resource development and sustainability, village development, women empowerment, early childhood education, health care and welfare) decided to provide lentils, rather than cash, as this was useful to the family and also immediate had nutritional value. The amount roughly corresponds to the opportunity cost of time for the mother. The thalis were chosen as a tangible sign of achievement, while also being of immediate use.
134 villages were selected on a random basis. 30 of the 134 study villages were to receive intervention A and 30 to receive intervention B. The 74 remaining villages were control villages and received no additional intervention.







Compared with the control group, immunization rates more than doubled in intervention A villages and increased by more than six times in the intervention B villages. There were no adverse events (severe reaction to immunization) reported in either intervention groups.

Costs: So which method would have been most costlier? Surprisingly, The average cost to Seva Mandir of fully immunising a child was $27.94 (1102 rupees, about £16 or €19) in the reliable camp with incentives and $55.83 (2202 rupees) in the reliable camp without incentives. The difference came from the fact that the camps had to be open from 11 am to 2 pm, regardless of the number of children present. Thus, the higher average number of children in the camps with incentives spread the daily fixed cost (mainly, the salary of the nurse and assistant) over more children. The marginal cost of an extra child being fully immunized with and without incentive in a given camp is, respectively, $6.60 and $1.30. The salaries of the nurse and assistant represented about half of the cost of the camp without incentives. When the same was calculated for the government, had they implemented the same interventions, the result were as follows: the average cost of fully immunizing a child was estimated at $25.18 in camps without incentives and $17.35 in camps with incentives.

On the intellectual side, she mentions that it helped them to understand how small incentives persuaded the general public to take decisions and their understanding of the public health care system. Now replicate the same experiment to different sets of people across 80 countries, and that's what more or less, J-Pal has been doing, which was founded in 2003 by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan. As per wiki, J-PAL was established to support randomized evaluations measuring interventions against poverty on topics ranging from agriculture and health to governance and education. The Lab was renamed in honor of Sheikh Abdul Latif Jameel when his son, MIT alumnus Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, supported it with three major endowments in 2005. 

Note: The work has been reproduced and restructured to make it more comprehensible. The paragraphs have been clipped from various sources, and there are strong chances that errors might have crept it. Apologies for the same in advance. Here are the references for the article. 

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