Top 10 interview Puzzles with solutions

This blog contains the my collection of top 10 puzzles asked in data science/analyst interviews. I thought of making a catalog so that they can be useful to one who is preparing for the interview.

So lets start this "Puzzling" journey.

1. Ant and Triangle Problem

Three ants are sitting at the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Each ant starts randomly picks a direction and starts to move along the edge of the triangle. What is the probability that none of the ants collide?

Solution

Let’s start by reversing the way the riddle is asked and find the probability that there willnot be a collision instead. When will this happen?

Well, what if all of the ants are walking in the same direction? Then there will never be a collision between any of the ants because they are all walking in the same direction. And, the only time they will be walking in the same direction is if they are all walking either counter-clockwise around the triangle, or clockwise around the triangle. So, there are only two scenarios in which a collision will not happen between the ants.

Now that we know that there are only two scenarios where the ants will not collide, we have to ask ourselves how many different ways are there for the ants to move on the sides of the triangle? Well, each ant can move in 2 different directions. Because there are 3 ants, this means that there are 23 (which equals eight) possible ways that the ants can move. And since we already know that there are only 2 ways in which the ants can avoid collision entirely, this means that there are 6 scenarios where the ants will collide. And 6 out of 8 possible scenarios, means that the probability of collision is 6/8, which equals 3/4 or .75. Thus, the probability of the ants colliding is .75.

2. Crossing the Bridge Puzzle

Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately, they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross without one. The bridge is only strong enough to support two people at a time. Not all people take the same time to cross the bridge. Times for each person: 1 min, 2 mins, 7 mins and 10 mins. What is the shortest time needed for all four of them to cross the bridge?

Solution : 

 The solution is to have W(10 mins) carry the torch and begin to cross with any of the others lets say X(1). Each continues at their own pace so in 1 minute X has reached the other side and one of the others can begin to cross say Y(2), when he reaches the other side Z(7) can begin to cross. W and Z will cross the bridge at the same time i.e. at the end of 10th minute.

This solution satisfies the criteria that there are never more than 2 people on the bridge and the torch is always on the bridge whilst someone is crossing. So in that sense it is a neat solution.

3. Burning Rope Problem

A man has two ropes of varying thickness (Those two ropes are not identical, they aren’t the same density nor the same length nor the same width). Each rope burns in 60 minutes. He actually wants to measure 45 mins. How can he measure 45 mins using only these two ropes.

He can’t cut the one rope in half because the ropes are non-homogeneous and he can’t be sure how long it will burn.

Solution :

Take one rope and burn it at both ends.At the same time, burn one end of the other rope. When the first rope is burnt (i.e. 30 minutes), light the other end of the other rope (half of the

remaining 30 minutes gives you 15 minutes) When it burns out, that`s 45 minutes.

4. Heaven’s Gate Problem

You are standing before two doors. One of the path leads to heaven and the other one leads to hell. There are two guardians, one by each door. You know one of them always tells the truth and the other always lies, but you don’t know who is the honest one and who is the liar. You can only ask one question to one of them in order to find the way to heaven. What is the question?

Solution : 

Ask one of the guard:" what would the other guard say if i ask him which way is the hell?" 

And whatever answer he gives that is the way to heaven. 

If you end up asking the question to the truthful one, he will tell the true and he knows the other guard is going to lie so he will so the way to heaven. 

If you end up asking the question to the liar he will lie what the answer will be and he lies and instead shows the way to heaven.

5. 10 Coins Puzzle

You are blindfolded and 10 coins are place in front of you on table. You are allowed to touch the coins, but can’t tell which way up they are by feel. You are told that there are 5 coins head up, and 5 coins tails up but not which ones are which. How do you make two piles of coins each with the same number of heads up? You can flip the coins any number of times.

Solution :

Make 2 piles with equal number of coins. Now, flip all the coins in one of the pile.

How this will work? lets take an example.

So initially there are 5 heads, so suppose you divide it in 2 piles.

Case:

P1 : H H T T T

P2 : H H H T T

Now when P1 will be flipped

P1 : T T H H H

P1(Heads) = P2(Heads)

Another case:

P1 : H T T T T

P2 : H H H H T

Now when P1 will be flipped

P1 : H H H H T

P1(Heads) = P2(Heads)

6. King and Wind Bottles Puzzle

A bad king has a cellar of 1000 bottles of delightful and very expensive wine. A neighboring queen plots to kill the bad king and sends a servant to poison the wine. Fortunately (or say unfortunately) the bad king’s guards catch the servant after he has only poisoned one bottle. Alas, the guards don’t know which bottle but know that the poison is so strong that even if diluted 100,000 times it would still kill the king. Furthermore, it takes one month to have an effect. The bad king decides he will get some of the prisoners in his vast dungeons to drink the wine. Being a clever bad king he knows he needs to murder no more than 10 prisoners – believing he can fob off such a low death rate – and will still be able to drink the rest of the wine (999 bottles) at his anniversary party in 5 weeks time. Explain what is in mind of the king, how will he be able to do so ?

Solution :

Think in terms of binary numbers. (now don’t read the solution, give a try).

Number the bottles 1 to 1000 and write the number in binary format.

bottle 1 = 0000000001 (10 digit binary)

bottle 2 = 0000000010

bottle 500 = 0111110100

bottle 1000 = 1111101000

Now take 10 prisoners and number them 1 to 10, now let prisoner 1 take a sip from every bottle that has a 1 in its least significant bit. Let prisoner 10 take a sip from every bottle with a 1 in its most significant bit. etc.

prisoner = 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

bottle 924 = 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0

For instance, bottle no. 924 would be sipped by 10,9,8,5,4 and 3. That way if bottle no. 924 was the poisoned one, only those prisoners would die.

After four weeks, line the prisoners up in their bit order and read each living prisoner as a 0 bit and each dead prisoner as a 1 bit. The number that you get is the bottle of wine that was poisoned.

1000 is less than 1024 (2^10). If there were 1024 or more bottles of wine it would take more than 10 prisoners

7. Mislabeled Jar Puzzle

You have 3 jars that are all mislabeled. One jar contains Apple, another contains Oranges and the third jar contains a mixture of both Apple and Oranges.

You are allowed to pick as many fruits as you want from each jar to fix the labels on the jars. What is the minimum number of fruits that you have to pick and from which jars to correctly label them?

Solution

Let’s take a scenario. Suppose you pick from jar labelled as Apple and Oranges and you got Apple from it. That means that jar should be Apple as it is incorrectly labelled. So it has to be Apple jar.

Now the jar labelled Oranges has to be Mixed as it cannot be the Oranges jar as they are wrongly labelled and the jar labelled Apple has to be Oranges.

Similar scenario applies if it’s a Oranges taken out from the jar labelled as Apple and Oranges. So you need to pick just one fruit from the jar labelled as Apple and Oranges to correctly label the jars.

8. Red and Blue marbles Puzzle

You have two jars, 50 red marbles and 50 blue marbles. You need to place all the marbles into the jars such that when you blindly pick one marble out of one jar, you maximize the chances that it will be red. When picking, you’ll first randomly pick a jar, and then randomly pick a marble out of that jar. You can arrange the marbles however you like, but each marble must be in a jar.

Solution :

Seems tricky at first right? Given that the number of red and blue marbles are the same, you would tend to think that the odds are 50-50. You would try different combinations, such as 25 of each colored marble in a jar or putting all red marbles in one jar and all the blue in the other. You would still end up with a chance of 50%.

So lets think of a better way to distribute the marbles. What if you put a single red marble in one jar and the rest of the marbles in the other jar? This way, you are guaranteed at least a 50% chance of getting a red marble (since one marble picked at random, doesn’t leave any room for choice).  Now that you have 49 red marbles left in the other jar, you have a nearly even chance of picking a red marble (49 out of 99).

So let’s calculate the total probability.

P( red marble ) = P( Jar 1 ) * P( red marble in Jar 1 ) + P( Jar 2 ) * P( red marble in Jar 2 )

P( red marble ) = 0.5 * 1 + 0.5 * 49/99

P( red marble ) = 0.7474

Thus, we end up with ~75% chance of picking a red marble.

9. Gold Bar Problem

You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay him. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. What and where are the fewest number of cuts to the bar of gold that will allow you to pay him 1/7th each day?

Solution :

The trick is not to try and how to cut in such a way to make 7 equal pieces but rather to make transactions with the worker. Make two cuts on the gold bar such that you have the following sizes of bars.

1/7, 2/7 and 4/7. For convenience sake, I would just refer to the bars as 1, 2 and 4.

At the end of Day 1: Give Bar 1 (You- 2 and 4, Worker- 1)

At the end of Day 2: Give Bar 2, Take back Bar 1 (You- 1 and 4, Worker- 2)

At the end of Day 3: Give Bar 1 (You- 4, Worker- 1 and 2)

At the end of Day 4: Give Bar 4, Take back Bar 1 and Bar 2 (You- 1 and 2, Worker- 4)

At the end of Day 5: Give Bar 1 (You- 2, Worker- 1 and 4)

At the end of Day 6: Give Bar 2, Take back Bar 1 (You- 1, Worker- 2 and 4)

At the end of Day 7: Give Bar 1 (You- Empty, Worker- 1, 2 and 4)

10. 100 Doors Puzzle

You have 100 doors in a row that are all initially closed. you make 100 passes by the doors starting with the first door every time. the first time through you visit every door and toggle the door (if the door is closed, you open it, if its open, you close it). the second time you only visit every 2nd door (door #2, #4, #6). the third time, every 3rd door (door #3, #6, #9), ec, until you only visit the 100th door. What state are the doors in after the last pass? Which are open which are closed?

Solution :

For example, after the first pass every door is open. on the second pass you only visit the even doors (2,4,6,8…) so now the even doors are closed and the odd ones are opened. the third time through you will close door 3 (opened from the first pass), open door 6 (closed from the second pass), etc..

what state are the doors in after the last pass? which are open which are closed?

You can figure out that for any given door, say door #42, you will visit it for every divisor it has. so 42 has 1 & 42, 2 & 21, 3 & 14, 6 & 7. so on pass 1 i will open the door, pass 2 i will close it, pass 3 open, pass 6 close, pass 7 open, pass 14 close, pass 21 open, pass 42 close. for every pair of divisors the door will just end up back in its initial state. so you might think that every door will end up closed? well what about door #9. 9 has the divisors 1 & 9, 3 & 3. but 3 is repeated because 9 is a perfect square, so you will only visit door #9, on pass 1, 3, and 9… leaving it open at the end. only perfect square doors will be open at the end.

Puzzles are good way to exercise your brain. I hope this was a good start.

Data Warehouse vs Data Lake

In my last post we talked about Data Lake and its need and advantages. In this post we will compare Data Lake with Data Warehouse.

The emergence of the data lake has periodically led to a somewhat regrettable dialogue that compares data warehouses unfavorably with data lakes. These kinds of discussions are inevitable as a new, hot concept elbows the previous decade’s paradigm out of the way. But, it’s a misleading thought process. While data lakes can accomplish a number of things that are very difficult for a data warehouse to do, the opposite is also true. The two technologies are inherently different and serve different enterprise needs. One is not necessarily better than the other. In some use cases, the data lake can be quite deficient when contrasted with a data warehouse.

A data warehouse is a carefully designed data store that contains data from pre-selected sources, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and logistics systems. Data warehouses tend to emphasize transactional / structured data over semi-structured and unstructured data. The data in a warehouse is usually organized using multi-dimensional, star or snowflake schemas in order to streamline execution of queries, reports, dashboards or the running of advanced analytical models.In Data Warehouse (DW), schema is defined before data is stored. This is called “Schema on WRITE” or required data is identified and modeled in advance. The quality of data that exists in a traditional Data Warehouse is cleansed whereas typical data that exist in Data Lake is Raw.

A data lake (typically implemented using Hadoop) is a mix of structured, semi-structured or unstructured data. For example, transactions, spreadsheets, Documents, sensor data, images, social media, etc. may all be stored in the data lake). The data lake may be fed using traditional-style batch jobs or by connecting the data lake to real-time data feeds.In Data Lake the schema is defined after the data is stored. This is called “Schema on READ”. So the data must be captured in code for each program accessing the data. Data Lake provides cheaper storage of large volumes of data and has potential to reduce the processing cost by bringing analytics near to data.The data lake gives business users immediate access to all data. They don’t have to wait for the data warehousing (DW) team to model the data or give them access. Rather, they shape the data however they want to meet local requirements. The data lake speeds delivery which is required in a dynamic market economy.Data Lakes offers unparalleled flexibility since nobody or nothing stands between business users and the data.

Pertinence in Big Data world: 

Traditional approach of manually curated data warehouses, provides limited window view of data and are designed to answer only specific questions identified at the design time. This may not be adequate for data discovery in today’s big data world. Moreover, data lake can contain any type of data – clickstream, machine-generated, social media, and external data, and even audio, video, and text. Traditional data warehouses are limited to structured data. The data lake can hold any type of data.

The question should not be, “Which one is better?” Rather, you should ask, “Which one is better for my scenario, given my unique needs?” The suitability of one over the other will depend on many factors that are particular to an organization.

A Data Lake

Recently, I came across a new term which is a product of evolving data science. The term is "Data Lake". With data multiplying on on a daily basis this term adds a different dimension to data science and has already created a lot of excitement. The data lake concept has quickly gained traction in the world of big data.

So, in this blog I wish to demystify the concept.

The term “data lake” uses a metaphor to simplify an approach to storing data for analysis that is abstract and cumbersome to describe in plain, factual terms. James Dixon, “Chief Geek” at Pentaho, is credited with coining the phrase. Dixon posted that each specialized data mart in a data warehouse could be likened to a bottle of water. The data was ready for use in a small, identifiable container. In contrast, a data “lake” is a massive, intermingled repository of all data in its raw form.

Need of Data Lake :

The reason that data lake concept came into picture was to adopt to the freewheeling, deep analysis, ask-anything ethos of big data. It’s harder to retool a data warehouse to do the kind of wide-ranging data correlation that big data solutions make relatively easy. 

Moreover, It is estimated that a staggering 70% of the time spent on analytics projects is concerned with identifying, cleansing, and integrating data. Data is often difficult to locate because it is scattered among many business applications and business systems. The data needs re-engineering and reformatting frequently in order to make it easier to analyze.

The data must be refreshed regularly to keep it up-to-date.Acquiring data for analytics in an ad hoc manner creates a huge burden on the teams that own the systems supplying data. Often the same type of data is repeatedly requested and the original information owner finds it hard to keep track of who has copies of which data.

As a result, implementing a data lake can be a solution. A data lake is a set of one or more data repositories that have been created to support data discovery, analytics, ad hoc investigations, and reporting. The data lake contains data from many different sources. People in the organization are free to add data to the data lake and access any updates as necessary.

In my next blog I will talk about Data Lake vs Data Warehouse.

A tale of a nation that Imports Garbage

Global waste production has doubled over the past ten years. By 2025, the world will produce garbage at a rate of 2.5 billion tonnes per year. Poor waste management in many developing countries is a threat to human health and the environment. Many developing countries struggle towards a sustainable model for waste collection and disposal.Despite large expenditures many nations have failed to take care of this problem and India is one of them. 

As we say this,Something incredible has been taking place in Sweden over the past several years, somewhat of a “recycling revolution,” . Currently less than one percent of the garbage produced in Swedish homes ends up in the landfill today, with the other ninety-nine percent being recycled or composted.

Sweden has been known for years now for the amazing and resourceful waste management system that they have had in place for some time. They have 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants and this burned waste powers 20 percent of Sweden’s district heating as well as electricity for about 250,000 Swedish homes.

Here’s the problem: Swedes have become so good at recycling that there’s no longer enough garbage to meet the heating plants’ needs. Sweden now has to import the trash that most other countries are trying to dispose of — some 800,000 tons in 2014, up from 550,000 tons in 2010.

For Sweden, Waste today is a commodity in a different way than it has been. It’s not only waste, it’s business. For now, Sweden imports its trash mostly from Britain and Norway.

Waste to Energy process (In brief)

After recyclable content has been removed, the garbage is placed in incinerators that produce heat or energy, which is then transported to nearby homes. From the ashes, small pieces of metal, which do not burn, are separated and recycled, while those of porcelain and tile are sifted to extract gravel, which is used in road construction. The remaining one percent goes into landfills. And though garbage-infused smoke sounds highly poisonous, thanks to electric filters that give the particles a negative electric charge, in Sweden the smoke is almost entirely nontoxic carbon dioxide and water, which are cleaned again before release. 

The Environmental Effects

Of course there is some controversy over this method of waste management and energy production. There are fumes that are produced that are toxic, but many argue that this is still a much better alternative to the typical landfills that we see more often in our country. On average, more than forty percent of the world’s trash is burned and mostly in open air, this is much different from the regulated, low-emission process that has been adopted by Sweden. This makes Sweden’s method a lot more eco-friendly.

It is unfortunate that at this time the options are to either pollute the air, or pollute the Earth because we are producing so much garbage and it doesn’t just simply disappear without leaving its mark. It doesn’t look like manufacturers are going to stop making products that can’t be recycled anytime soon, so it is up to us to be more conscious with what we are consuming. We need to stop the problem at the source.

How Can We All Be A Bit More Like The Swedish? 

Sweden is an excellent example of a nation of citizens that care for their environment and their ecological footprint. If the Swedish are able to recycle 99% of their waste, why can’t we? Well we certainly can, however it does take a bit more effort(and that is where the problem lies with this country). I believe that it is truly worth the effort, soon it will become so natural to us that it won’t even feel effortful, we just have to start taking that step!

Dear "Import and Export Control Department of India", Can you please ask Sweden to come and get some trash from us as we've lots it and we haven't figured out what to do with it yet.

Although "Swachh Bharat Abhiyan" is an excellent initiative but the question is, Is it good enough?

SQUARE ROOT OF A NUMBER without using square root sign or any built in function - 2 methods

Recently, in an interview I was asked one simple question. How will you find a square root of  a number without  any built in function ?

I fumbled, but recovered well. Finally, I figured out two approaches. First one was Newton's method of finding the square root and second one was the one I had read during my graduation.

Method 1 (Newton's Method):

Algorithm :

We will assume square root to be s. 

s is less than square root of x (number whose square root we want to find) and x/s (Nuumber/Squareroot calculated in iterations) is greater than square root of x. Averaging these two (till the answer comes the same in two iterations) will give us the answer.

Program (C/C++/C#):

float sqrt(int x)

{

        int prev,k = 0;

        int kmax = 1000;

        float s = 1;

        for(k=0;k<kmax;k++)

        {

                prev = s;

                s = (s + x/s)/2;

                if(prev == s)

                {

                        break;

                }

        }

        return s;

}

Example :

let’s compute the square root of 9.

1. First Iteration

x = 9

k=0

s=1

prev=1

s = (1+9/1)/2 = 5

is(prev == s) -> No

2. Second Iteration

x = 9

k=1

prev=5

s=(5+9/5)/2 = 3.4

is(prev == s) -> No

3. Third Iteration

x = 9
k=2
prev=3(as it is int)
s=(3.4+9/3.4)/2 = 3.023 (This will be equal to 3 eventually)




is(prev == s) -> Yes

Stop...

Method 2 : 

This approach deals with finding a number which multiplied by itself becomes our given N(The number whose square root we want to find).The simplest way to do it would be to loop from zero to N(Number) multiplying each number by itself and verifying if it equals N.  
if we think about it for a while we  realize we can do it much faster, how?… Binary Search!.

Algorithm (Calculating Square root of 9):

We have our range of possible square roots: 0 to 9

1.- The idea is to get the middle element in our range: 9 + 0 / 2 = 4.5

2.- multiply it by itself: 4.5 * 4.5 let’s call this new value P = 20.25

3.- verify if P equals N(Actual Number i.e 9), if it does then we have found the square root of N, if not…

4.- Now we have two possibilities:

– P is greater than N: in this case we are will modify our range of possibilities because we know all numbers greater than 4.5 are not the square root, so now our range of possible square roots are between 0 and 4.5

– P is less than N: This is the opposite, so we would modify our lower bound instead of the upper bound. 4.5 to N(i.e 9 in this case)

We are going to repeat these steps until we find the square root of N.

Program (Python) :

#!/usr/bin/python -tt
 
import sys
 
def sqrt(n):
    start = 0
    end = n
    m = 0
    min_range = 0.0000000001;
     
    while end - start > min_range:
        m = (start + end) / 2.0;
        pow2 = m * m
        if abs(pow2 - n) <= min_range:
            return m
        elif pow2 < n:
            start = m
        else:
            end = m
             
    return m
 
def main():
    for line in sys.stdin:
        n = int(line)
        print sqrt(n)
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Although we have built in functions to find out square root, This problem was not only a 

good brain exercise but also tested my logical skills.

I hope to come up with few more such interesting problems (this time before appearing for 
my next interview).

Chinese currency(Yuan) devaluation

Few days ago,China perturbed global markets by devaluing its currency (the yuan). For a naive reader like me it was very difficult to understand what did it exactly mean and Why did China do it ?
In simple words, It adjusted the value of its currency downward compared to other currencies. The country cut the currency’s value against the dollar by approx 2% which was considered as the biggest move in a decade.

This post will explain and answer the question regarding this rattling move.


Why did China devalue its currency?

The yuan has been rising in value, when it should have been falling due to slowing economic growth and lower exports. Furthermore, the currencies of other developing countries have fallen. This has hurt Chinese exporters by making their goods more expensive abroad. China is hoping that the devaluation will improve the country’s economic growth and stimulate the declining export industry. Falling exports means China runs of the risk of large-scale job losses in manufacturing industries. It does not want that to occur.

What will the devaluation mean for China?

The devaluation means Chinese products are more competitive overseas. Chinese goods will be cheaper for overseas buyers. Thus the devaluation was welcomed by factory owners in China.On the flipside, imports will be more expensive. This will impact overseas companies.

What will the devaluation mean for India?

India and China officially resumed trade in 1978. India-China bilateral trade has reached $72.3 billion in 2014-15 (exports: $11.9 billion and imports: $60.4 billion), making China India’s largest goods trading partner. The devaluation will hurt Indian companies that want to export to China by making Indian goods more expensive. However, it will be cheaper for us to import goods.  This, in turn, will have a negative impact on Indian exports. Further, there will be an influx of Chinese goods into India, which will result in widening the already rising trade deficit (i.e. more Import over Export) with China.

World wide Impact of Yuan devaluation :

You can think of currency devaluation as a kind of nationwide sale. There are thousands of businesses in China that sell goods and services to customers in different foreign countries. Their goods are generally priced in China's own currency, the yuan. So if the yuan becomes less valuable relative to the dollar, Chinese imports suddenly become cheaper. In other words, when the yuan falls by 2 percent, as it has over the past few days, it's as if every business in China cut its prices for the World by 2 percent.

As sales help stores sell more of their products, a currency devaluation helps countries sell more exports, boosting the economy. Right now the Chinese economy is in the midst of an economic slowdown and has suffered from stock market turmoil, so it can use some extra help.

Of course, everything I've just said works in reverse for other countries. As the yuan gets cheaper, the other currencies get more expensive from the perspective of Chinese consumers. That means it's getting more expensive for Chinese people to import World-wide goods, so they're likely to import fewer of them. Lower demand for world-wide goods could mean slightly slower economic growth here in other countries.

For this reason, people often treat currency devaluation as a "win" for the devaluing country and a "loss" for the country whose currency gets more valuable.So, people outside China worry that further declines in the yuan could weaken economic growth outside of China.But it's important not to forget that the first-order result of a cheaper yuan is that world-wide consumers pay lower prices for Chinese goods.

Finally, I will end this discussion with the following question.

Can and should India also devalue its currency ?

The simple answer is India can not devalue its currency because the Indian Rupee exchange rate is market determined. The Rupee had been floating since 1993. The Reserve Bank of India can not devalue it like the Chinese central bank did. 

The RBI can intervene in the market to sell the Indian Rupee (and buy, say US Dollar) to depreciate Indian Rupee if it thinks that Rupee is overvalued but this has consequences - 


1) If the RBI target exchange rate is way off what the market thinks it should be and if market participants detect what RBI is doing then it can trade against that information and drag RBI into a potentially loss making large trade

2) A very low exchange rate will make imports more expensive thus increasing inflation. India is a net importer and had been running a high trade deficit (more imports than exports) for many years now. So an attempted "devaluation" by RBI even if successful will increase inflation

The Chinese  Yuan on the other hand is pegged against a basket of currencies (with Dollar probably the most important component in the basket) and is not freely floating. Consequently the central bank has more control over its rate.  

Greece's Debt Crisis - My understanding

During last few days ,or months now, the Greek crisis – has made headlines around the world. Sometimes I wonder who caused this Economic Crisis. Teachers never stopped going to school, Police did there job, Army was at work, Fireman, office workers, laborers they all did there jobs. So if none of them was responsible, the question is who was. The Banks? The Government ? Or the People with virtual jobs ?

This article tries to answer some of above stated questions and explain in simple terms how Greece found itself in this mess.
Greece has been going through a financial meltdown for years. And since the country is a part of the eurozone, what happens in Greece doesn’t stay in Greece.

What does “Eurozone” means?

Throughout history, European countries were always at war with each other. After the Second World War, Europe was in ruins, its economy in shambles, and its political authority in the world diminished.
European countries realized that to survive in the post-War world with stability and relevance they could not afford more wars. For this, they had to find a way to come together and resolve differences. This led to the formation of the European Union (EU).

To make business easier, a common currency was introduced – the Euro. Countries which adopted the Euro formed the Eurozone; these countries abandoned their former currencies and allowed the newly formed European Central Bank (ECB) to make economic policies.

The eurozoneis a monetary union of 19 of the 28 European Union (EU) member states which have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency. The other nine members of the European Union continue to use their own national currencies.

The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland,Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.


What is the main cause of crisis?

In 2001, Greece was given a chance to join the eurozone, and enjoy similar legitimacy in global markets as countries like Germany.To prove that Greece could handle sitting at the EU table, the country had to show that its budget was in check. It wasn’t. But Greece pretended that it was by doing things like moving certain expenses off the books. Once it got the OK to join the eurozone, the country started partying like it was at a big, fat, Greek wedding. Public sector wages rose to way more than a private-sector paycheck. Pension spending was way up, and it didn’t help that the retirement age was 58. Or that tax evasion was the norm. Then the global financial crisis hit, and soon everyone woke up to a Greek tragedy.

Greece eventually realized it was hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. It was forced to ask its European parents for help. The so-called “troika” of international creditors -- the IMF(International Monetory fund), ECB(European Central Bank), and euro member countries -- stepped in with a series of bailouts. In exchange, the troika said Greece better shape up. That meant austerity measures like public sector layoffs, pension cuts, and tax hikes.

What is the condition now?

Living standards are way down, and more than a quarter of the country is unemployed. A political party called Syriza that pledged to change all this mess was elected to power on promises to undo austerity. For months, the new government and its creditors fought over the terms of yet another bailout plan. In the meantime, Greece became the first eurozone country to go into default.Greece and its international parents finally agreed on the terms for a third bailout plan. But it’s unclear if Greece’s anti-austerity lawmakers are going to go along with the plan. They're deciding whether hold a snap election to kick the current prime minister out of power.

What if Greece goes bankrupt?

If this continues, Greece could default (meaning, be declared bankrupt). Normally, a small country like Greece defaulting wouldn’t cause international concern. But because of the Eurozone, if Greece defaults, Spain or Ireland could be next. Then Italy, then Portugal, France and then Germany – and with that the entire world will be dragged into the major economic crisis. This could lead to civil unrest; political instability and possibly warfare.


In the next few days Greece will be at the center of the universe; the international spotlight will be focused on the Greek people.The future of Europe – and the world – hangs delicately in balance.

Indian Products - Foreign Names

Name Matters! Name of the person. Name of the company. Name of the college. Everything is just but a name. You are known by that one thing which brings up the imagery of the live thing just from the name. Hence there is so much of research happening on what names to be given to the kids, to the website, to the domains, to the product and so on. 

Whenever we buy anything what do we look for? Brand name. Yes, we look for our favorite brand. Trust, quality, image, promises, and glamour – we see all of these things in our favorite brand and we are deeply loyal to these brands. There are many Indian brands which enjoy tremendous brand recognition, have huge brand loyal customers and a lion’s share of market. This is a competitive world, survival of the fittest and toughest and never dies attitude is needed for survival and for profitability too. To survive in this market, many companys have adopted  a simple strategy.
To Impress an Indian, talk in Hindi if you are a foreigner or talk in English if you are an Indian. 

Indian consumer has a mindset that whatever sounds English is better than the Indian counterpart of it. The success of all the Indian companies lies in it up to some extend, this doesn't mean their products were bad but surely means that their names helped them a lot on the way, be it Godrej, Reliance, Videocon, Hero,  or Tata. Though they sound familiar to us now,in the starting days they were thought as foreign brands.

This also can be seen in the failure of many Indian good quality products such as Vicco, Miswak, Hamam or Medimix for that matter. Though they are fairly marketed and quite a success but when you compare them with their foreign counterpart, they are next to nothing in terms of market share. You yourself can see how Nirma was taken over by Surf Excel and Tide in these days. 

In the FMCG markets, you will have to give the customer what he wants or you will have to make your product wanted, no matter how bad it is. So naming the product is the process of making your product WANTED in Indian market. 

This nerve of Indian Customer is expertly identified by the expert marketers in big organisations hence the new Indian products have English names.

List of few Indian Brands having Foreign names. 
1.  Van Heusen
2.  Allen Solly
3. HDFC
4. CCD
5. Kwality Wall's
6. Royal Enfield
7. Old monk
8. Louis Phillipe
9. Lakme 
10. Airtel


Keeping an English name helps many other aspects.

1. The same product can be sold in international markets without having to spend more on creation of the marketing collateral for the new name.
2.  Reduction of redundant costs. And for that reason, now ads are coming with multi-geography subjects in the commercials and not just Indians featuring in them.
3. Indian names are hard to pronounce by people in international geographies. Hence English names.
4. Indians are biased towards American stuff. And it makes total business sense to go with the tide rather than trying to stand up with a Hindi name. Your purpose is to sell and do business not solve a nomenclature riddle.

I guess this is it.. WE LOVE WHATEVER IS ENGLISH.

Which generation you belong to ? X,Y or Z ?

Generation X

Born: 1966-1980
Age in 2015: 35 to 50
Current Indian Population: 40 million (Approx)

Gen Xers are arguably the best educated generation with approx 30% obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher. With that education and a growing maturity they formed families with a higher level of caution and pragmatism than their parents demonstrated. Concerns run high over avoiding broken homes, kids growing up without a parent around and financial planning.
Gen X is more open to diversity and has learnt to embrace differences such as religion, sexual orientation, class, race and ethnicity.

Known as the generation with the lowest voting participation rate of any generation, Gen X is “the generation that dropped out without ever turning on the news or tuning in to the social issues around them.”.Gen X is sometimes referred to as the “lost” generation and is often characterized by high levels of skepticism, “what’s in it for me” attitudes.


Generation Y

Born: 1981-2000
Age in 2015: 15-34
Current Indian Population: 55 million (Approx)

Referred as the Millennial Generation, or simply Millennials. Generation Y has been shaped by the technological revolution that occurred throughout their youth. Gen Y grew up with technology, so being connected and tech savvy is in their DNA. Equipped with latest technology and gadgets, such as smart Phones, laptops and tablets, Generation Y is online and connected 24/7, 365 days a year. Many Millennials grew up seeing their Generation X parents working day and night doing stressful corporate jobs, which has shaped their own views on the workforce and the need for work-life balance. 
Gen Y members are much more racially and ethnically diverse and they are much more segmented as an audience aided by the rapid expansion in Cable TV channels, satellite radio, the Internet,etc.

Gen Y are less brand loyal and the speed of the Internet has led the cohort to be similarly flexible and changing in its fashion, style consciousness and where and how it is communicated with.
Gen Y kids often raised in dual income or single parent families have been more involved in family purchases,everything from groceries to new cars. One in nine Gen Yers has a credit card co-signed by a parent.


Generation Z

Born: 2001-2015
Age in 2013: 0-14
Current Indian Population: 15 million and growing rapidly

While we don’t know much about Gen Z yet.We know a lot about the environment they are growing up in. This highly diverse environment will make the grade schools of the next generation the most diverse ever. Higher levels of technology will make significant inroads in academics allowing for customized instruction.
Gen Z kids will grow up with a highly sophisticated media and computer environment and will be more Internet savvy and expert than their Gen Y forerunners. 

The Smarter Idiot

Recently I heard a seminar in which the speaker mentioned that there is a threat to TV medium, as average time we watch TV is decreasing. My mother, rather all the mothers in India, would have relaxed after this research if this statement would have been made a decade ago. But, the threat comes because of another smarter Idiot.


Traditionally, TV, the idiot box, has long continued to be the largest medium for consumers and hence advertisers. But traditional TV is facing the heat because of smarter devices. Though the size of the screen hung on the walls of family rooms is becoming larger, the average time spent in front of that screen is decreasing.

Marketers think of smartphones and tablets as the “first screen” and TV has been moved to second position. People with access to a smartphone or tablet now spend an average of 2 hours and 57 minutes on them each day and the old first screen on average gets about 2 hours and 48 minutes of attention each day, according to the recent research. The mobile device emerges as an even bigger winner when you filter the data for dedicated users.

An inflection point like this has clearly been coming. The amount of time that people spend watching TV has been flat for several years, while people continue to spend more and more time with apps. Most TV networks have also reported the decrease in subscriptions.

India has been largely immune to this phenomena, but things are changing quite fast here as well. While traditional TV might not have seen the drop in audiences and advertising, but the channels are already feeling the heat. With 4G already here smarter devices will happen here too.

The threat to TV is not only from the apps like Netflix and HotStar, but also from the social networking sites.  Facebook recently announced the launch of its latest video streaming feature called "Live". This will enable celebrities to live stream content about themselves to entire fan base. Moreover, the reach of Facebook is way far than the reach of any single broadcaster.

Imagine Star Plus telecasting the Filmfare,  but Facebook users watching it "Live" from the perspective of their stars.  Imagine IPL on MAX versus IPL through the eyes of Sachin Tendulkar or Shah Rukh khan in stands. With the best quality smartphones available in the market and the phones getting smarter the competition is going to be a revolution in the Media.

The "Thumb" generation wants sharable content at their thumb press rather than long boring format.
So, TV guys may feel completely lost in this battle.

Bank's Assets and Liabilities a very simple and easy explanation

Being very new to the concepts of assets and liabilities in a balance sheet, I have always tried to explore more on this to make it easy. I have come up with a simple explanation of Assets and Liabilities of a commercial bank. It is a brief overview so that a layman can also understand the assets and liabilities that are included in balance sheet of a bank.

Commercial bank's balance sheet has two main sides i.e. the liabilities and the assets. From the study of the balance sheet of a bank we come to know about a system which a bank has followed for raising funds and allocation of these funds in different asset categories. Bank can have others money with it. It can be in terms of shareholders share per capita, or depositors deposits. This money is the bank's liabilities. On the other hand bank's own sources of income leads to generation of assets for bank.

Liabilities: 

a. Share Capital : the contribution which shareholders have contributed for starting the bank.

b. Reserve Funds : The money which bank has accumulated over the years from its undistributed                                        profits

c. Deposits : The money owned by customers

      i. Fixed Deposits

      ii. Saving Deposits

      iii.Current Deposits

      iv. Other Deposits

d. Borrowings : Bank can borrow from central and other commercial banks.

e. Other liabilities

Assets :

a. Cash

      i.  in Hand

      ii.  with the Central Bank (RBI)

      iii. with the other banks

b. Money at short : When a bank makes money available at short notice to other banks and                                financial institutions for a very short period of 1-14 days it is also treated                                 as bank's asset.

c. Bills and securities discounted

d. Investment of bank

e. Loans and Advances given

f. Other Assets

Clarke Vs Sangakara : contrasting carriers with similar numbers

Cricket is a game that has thrived on comparisons. If you call for comparison on numbers these two players will make their way through the top 5 greats of this century.
A total of 20,978 runs from 237 Tests* at an average of 78.15. In 649 ODIs, 22,215 runs at an average of 43.24. These are the combined numbers of Kumar Sangakkara and Michael Clarke. On August 20, 2015, both these players will play their final Test match. When the Tests in P Sara Oval in Colombo and The Oval in London end, the two legends of the game will leave the cricketing world poorer. If you look at the numbers from 2004, then Sanagakkara and Clarke are at the 2nd and 3rd position of highest run getters. 

If one has to look at the way how Sangakkara and Clarke started their cricketing careers, the contrast is evident. In the beginning, Sangakkara did not know whether he belonged to the Sri Lankan dressing room. It took one knock of 98 against South Africa in tough conditions in 2001, one year after he made his debut in 2000, to give him necessary assurance and confidence.

Clarke made a memorable start. On his Test debut against India in 2004, he played a knock that established him as a once in a generation cricketer. He tackled the likes of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh in such spectacular fashion that his 151 put Australia on the path where they would conquer the final frontier after a gap of 35 years. Clarke’s display in Bangalore had made him the golden boy of Australia.

When it came to run-scoring, both batsmen outclassed each other several times. While Sangakkara amassed big scores, including a magnificent 287 in a record partnership of 624 against South Africa in 2006, Clarke was scoring centuries but they were not big hundreds. While Sangakkara’s big appetite for big runs eased, Clarke responded with four double-tons in one year. When Clarke scored 329 against India in Sydney, it took Sangakkara two years to respond with 319 against Bangladesh. Both players almost outdid each other when it came to guts and determination.

Both players are leaving at interesting times. For Clarke, the fire seems to have burned down due to a combination of injuries and due to the heartbreak surrounding the death of Phillip Hughes. For Sangakkara, he is leaving at a time when Sri Lanka cricket is in transition and when there are whispers that he prefers County over Country. Yet, greatness has come easily for Sangakkara but for Clarke, it has taken years of toil to make people acknowledge his ability.

In a nutshell, these two cricketers have given us cherished memories. One will miss Sangakkara’s trade-mark punch off the back foot and his bent knee cover drive. In the coming summer, one might not see Clarke’s shot-arm pull or his nimble footed advance down the wicket to the spinners. Sangakkara looked assured while Clarke was a nervous starter. One was smooth and classy while the other was determined, dogged and resolute.

The cricketing world will be poorer with the absence of Sangakkara and Clarke. However, for this generation of fans, it has been a treat to see a Sri Lankan and Australian, two contrasting cultures traversing their own diverse yet similar paths to greatness.