Most of us started analytics journey either by getting formal degree in statistics, computer science, mathematics etc. or by learning analytics on job..
There are some who never reach that stage of learning beyond primary education. Some do not even get primary education. Seeing beauty of mathematical equations is farfetched idea for them. They do not know meaning of database management. But, what they know is real life problems and everyday struggles. For example: So called dabbawalahs in Mumbai do not know analytics but, they are able to optimize their services for entire city and have higher satisfaction from their customers than any corporates. Please see:
- http://hbr.org/2012/11/mumbais-models-of-service-excellence/ar/1
- http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/indias-dabbawalas-low-tech-role-models-for-business/
What if, their kids understand mathematics and analytics well? Would it be two-way education, where they teach us about their business and we teach them optimization?
With this thought, I entered into area teaching mathematics and analytics to the kids and sometime to parents in slums on weekends and the adventure started. Here is my summary:
Problems faced:
- Lot of resistance to trust an outsider
- Language issues: You need to understand regional language and teach them in that language
- Knowledge levels: every kid has different levels of knowledge since they never went through standard schooling. Some know how to add numbers. Some are really good in solving even equations if you explain them equations in their language and give the right context. Some are patient and some have very low attention span.
- Labour cost is really low (Question from kids and their parents: why do we need to optimize?)
Lessons learnt:
- When kids are fighting for daily bread, it is tough for them to concentrate on lectures. Unless you show them immediate effect in terms of quality of life improvement and how basic and advance mathematics will change their life, you won’t get any attention. (Incentive can be free food for attending the lectures and free clothing for those who clear the small quizzes)
- These kids are more enthusiastic to apply learned techniques to real life problems specially when you tell them about propensity to buy models, competitor analysis and segmentation (like one asked about how to implement this model where his mother’s small mobile flower shop would be in order to sell more). Implementation part is much more interactive than theoretical part, where most of the kids lose their interest.
- Kids are able to relate to real life examples which will solve their real life problems.
- They get inspired by stories of mathematicians who speak their language and are from their background. For example: Ramanujan
It is enriching experience to discuss analytics ideas with these kids as these kids think of every idea as the solution to solve their daily problems. They have dire need to improve their life and after spending some time with them, they feel analytics/ mathematics will solve their problems. Talk about how to increase sales of their small vegetable shops (these are not even shops, but just a small cart on which their parents go door to door to sell for marginal profit of 100 rupees per day), and their eyes light up. Show them how we analyze sales by geography, forecast sales with seasonality and price propensity, they will jump in the air and run to their parents what they learnt. Some of them came up with pricing model varying with geo locations (as per richness of particular zip code).
Not sure, how much impact these weekend lectures have made in their lives..but, they surely have a logical platform. They do leverage this platform once in a while and come up with the problems they face in a week during next weekend’s lecture.
This adventure has taught me one thing: Analytics has no boundaries. It is a tool for all.
May be some readers might find this article extremely naive..some will have more experience in doing such things..still, thought of sharing…