Quantiz@March'09

On 31st March 2009, Quantinuum - The Quants Forum of SIMSR organised its second monthly meet.

The event started with a presentation by Prof. Nilakantan of Data Mining. This presentation was followed by Mr. Sourav Phadke's presentation of his final year project on calculation of minimum distance and time between any two stations on the Mumbai SUburban railway line. The presentaion was informational and informed the students ways to use quantitative techniques in their projects.

Next was the presentation from PGDM-A students Amit Wadhwa, Sana Khan and Aanand Mehra on the feasability of the claim of JAAGO RE campaign of 1 billion votes in India by 2010.

Finally the puzzle contest was organised by Gaurav Mehra which witnessed 20 teams participating in solving 15 mathematics puzzles.
After one hour of puzzle solving by the teams the results of the event are as follows:

1st : MANI PRADHAN (Score - 31)
2nd: BENDRUM MAHENDAR REDDY (Score - 28)
3rd : AMISH DALAL (Score - 25)

Other close finishers which are worth mentioning are:

Chinmaya Sahoo (Score - 24)
Priyaj Shah (Score - 23)
Milan Kr. Sahu (Score - 20)
Agamdeep Singh (Score - 20)
Shriyak Dedhia (Score - 20)

Quantiz @ iCON'09

Quantinuum has successfully organized Quantiz in iCON 2009 – the MCA techfest at K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research. The event was all about maths puzzle and programming. It was consist of two stages. In the first stages the participants were given 10 puzzles and 1 case. The response was excellent. Total 21 teams have participated in the first stage. The participants came from different colleges in Mumbai. Based on the performance in first stage 10 teams were selected for the second stage competition. In the second stage the shortlisted teams were given 4 puzzles which they had to solve using programming languages like C, C++ and Microsoft Excel. At the end of the competition Akhil and Suyash from VESIT won the first prize and second prize went to Anupam and Aditya from SIMSR. All the participants admitted that the questions were tough enough and they enjoyed solving them. The organizers of iCON were also very glad for the success of the event and they have decided to keep this event in their future programs too.

Pricing of FMCG products- king or dunce

when i bought toilet soap this time, i noticed a very interesting practice of the manufacturer to achieve price increase without explicit intimation or knowledge of customers.
dove produced in march 08 cost rs.30. for 75 gm cake and in jan 2009 90 gm cake is offered in a three pack for rs.120. if you had expected a reduced price in a value pack of three you are in for a surprise. the price increase works out like this:
rs. 30 for 75 gms works out to rs. 120 for 300 gms i.e. for four cakes and now after 9 months you end up paying rs.120 for three 90 gm cake i.e. for 270 gms.
this ruse of the manufacturers works very well esp when the customers are brought up on value pack concept of three/four packs which lasts for a longtime with you say two to three months.
the product virtually lasts in the market for close to six months including the pipeline, after which you mentally accept a price change.
incidentally, the three 90 gm pack also offers rs.8 discount i.e. 128 to 120 to boot. this means a 90 gm pack should have normally gained a price change for quantity to rs.36 without increase instead got to rs.43 and achieved a price increase of 20 %.
a slightly difficult price increase to decode, isn't it?
is customer king or dunce?"

N.S.Nilakantan

New Members

Any one interested in joining this initiative is welcomed.....

Please send a email to gaurav.mehra27@gmail.com and come and join us to explore the interesting world of numbers with us...

Thanks.

Foundation of Quantinuum

Quantinuum- The Quants Forum of SIMSR is a initiative started by the students under the guidance of Professor Nilkanthan and aims at exploring the new facets of the quants world.

The activities of the forum will include - Quizzes, Research Projects, Guest Lectures and lots more to explore new depths of the quantitaive world.