The Positive Effect of Facebook Addiction

I was trying to think of what I should blog about next and was making no headway, so I decided to procrastinate by going to Facebook! Immediately I thought to myself, 'wow, I really do check Facebook way too much,' and started to think about why it is that so many of us are addicted to Facebook. I realised that when it comes down to it, I do in fact use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with my friends, not to waste time.

I think that it is an innate curiosity about our friends that makes us check Facebook whenever we want to procrastinate. Facebook made a smart move by putting a news feed up as the home page instead of the profile page. I definitely spend a lot of time randomly checking things that appear on my news feed, and sure enough it serves the intended purpose of informing me of my friends lives. If you think about the number of times you know what someone is up to because of Facebook, it is not insignificant.

Of course there is also the issue of intentionally scouring a particular person's profile in order to figure out more about them for whatever reason. All of the detail people put up on their profiles makes this rather straightforward. It is also important to realise that your pictures on Facebook are probably even more telling than all of the information you have posted about yourself. In this particular case, it is obvious that stalking can be for reasons other than trying to get news about a friend. However I won't bother discussing my thoughts on the negative aspects.

Overall, in spite of the fact that it seems to you that you are simply wasting time browsing Facebook, in reality, I believe it is actually a good thing that to procrastinate so many people are taking an interest in their friends lives. Then again, maybe I am simply justifying to myself the endless hours I spend on Facebook?

The Hurdle for Solar Energy

A lot of research in academic institutions is going into ways to harvest energy more efficiently and in a sustainable way. The obvious source of clean, unlimited energy is the sun, however,as is popular in the news, solar energy is not yet economically viable. My own research interests are in materials and methods to create cheap solar energy, so I will describe here the main scientific hurdles in the field and ways to address them.

Most solar cells are made of either Silicon or a derivative of a compound called Gallium Arsenide (GaAs). The basic principle on which the materials convert light to electricity is that they are able to absorb light of a certain wavelength (colour) and use the energy in the light to excite an electron to become free like in a metal. By 'freeing' many electrons in this way, electricity is produced and you can simply connect a device to the cell just like you would a battery. This brings us to the first problem with solar cells, that only certain colours of light can produce electricity. The chief way in which people are trying to solve this problem is by taking light of different colours and using certain chemicals to convert that light to the colour of light suitable for the solar cell. Another way of attacking this issue is to use different types of solar cells to convert different parts of the solar spectrum to electricity.

The next major issue with solar cells is that even with the right colour of light hitting it, only a certain amount of the incoming light actually excites electrons and of the fraction of electrons only some actually make it to the wires connecting to the device. In order to ensure more electrons actually make it to the device, the solar cell has to be a perfect crystal so that the electron doesn't lose any energy before going to the wires. Doing this is extremely expensive, which is also the last major issue with solar cells right now, they are too expensive! There are again two major approaches to solving this problem, one is concentrating the light onto a small solar cell, and the other is making cheaper solar cells at the cost of conversion efficiency.

In terms of concentrators, there are a lot of interesting advances being made to different ways of concentrating light that can be incorporated in urban buildings by essentially have light fall on a sheet and directing that light to the edges of the sheet where you place a solar cell. At the other end of the 'spectrum', cheap solar cells are being made out of plastics, however, the conversions efficiencies are extremely low (~4%) as opposed to silicon cells that can reach ~30% efficiency. Here again a lot of research is being done to increase the efficiency, and it seems to be a promising area of development.

While there is still some time before economically viable solar energy is available, what is important to realise is that at the end of the day, oil companies will need to be shut up. The actual biggest problem right now is creating political incentives to promote solar energy, and of course pushing in the opposite direction are the large oil companies. There has to be more political interest in investing in clean energy. The only government that is doing a good job right now is Germany, with excellent incentives to set up solar energy farms. Then again, if it wasn't for oil, perhaps Bush wouldn't have given the Iraqi people democracy?

Academic Life in London

As an American, I have always had a romanticised version of what academic life in the UK would be like. As someone else once said while discussing the education system in the UK, 'just listen to their accents, they must be intelligent!' More seriously though, most of what is taught throughout high school science is all people who came up with brilliant ideas in Europe, and mostly in the UK. However, I honestly believe that like the empire itself, their days of dominance are well behind them.

I started pursuing my Masters in the Physics department of Imperial college last Fall with the hope of pursuing a challenging course considering the Masters is awarded in just one year. However, I must admit that I am quite disappointed in the academic demands of the program. Nevertheless, I won't write here about specific issues with my program, rather I will try to stay general about the issues in the education system.

The biggest problem I see is the lack of continuous evaluation in the courses. All of the grade that holds any consequence is decided by an exam at the end of the term, or in some cases the year. There are multiple issues with this system, the obvious one is that there is no incentive to do work until a few days before the exam, thus increasing pressure at the time and also leading the lethargy during the term. The next problem with it is that there is no form of feedback on your progress through the term, that your exam's results will tell you whether or not you understood what was going on. Finally, it rewards test taking ability far more than understanding the material. At the end of the day it becomes a game of seeing who is best at handling the pressure of one exam determining the grade and how well you navigate the paper.

A second problem with studying in the UK is that the people who are studying a particular subject are typically students who enjoyed the subject in high school and decided that they want to pursue it, and then the system makes them stick to it. The inability to change the course once you start the program is a significant problem when it comes class morale and interest. I spoke with a lecturer at a prominent London University a while ago who is also from the US and he expressed this exact sentiment. In essence, what he had observed is that by the time students reach their third year, most either realize the subject was not for them or they have done so badly in exams that they no longer bother with their classes. This breeds a cohort of students who simply don't care. This is of course opposed to a system where you are free to choose your major, so people who end up staying in the subject do so because they enjoy it!

An issue specific to Masters courses in the UK is the tenure of the program. Offering one year Masters degrees seems like a good deal to students, however in reality the amount one can learn in one year is not significant. Most one year programs are structured such that a student takes 4 classes each term and does research over the summer. To me this sounds like a Bachelor's extension program. There is no 'Mastery' gained by doing this. More intensive Masters programs around the world are two years and the student typically does research for the entire duration of the two years. Thus actually allowing some amount of competency to be gained.

A final thought is on the selectivity of the programs. I know a lot of Americans who come to the UK for a Masters because it is easier to get into, and honestly, it really probably is. A lot of people come here to attend a well known school, like LSE, the Oxbridge system, etc. where getting into an Ivy or equivalent is much harder. I don't understand why programs in the UK aren't more selective, I can only guess its a money issue, Masters programs must make the University money. If the Universities in the UK simply reduced the number of programs, instead of circumstances like LSE's 100s of programs, and made admission more competitive, the class would be stronger and feed off each other's ideas.

I will stop here for the moment with my own opinions on the faults of the British education system. Mostly because it doesn't matter at all what I think about the system, nothing will ever really change it. I know professors who hate it and they can't do anything about it within their own institutes, so my opinion will do absolutely nothing. The only way to get reform to happen is for either a notable brain drain to occur, or for the economy and R&D in the UK to worsen as a consequence of the education. Neither of these are realistic, probably because Americans keep coming to London!

A basic view of Econophysics

Econophysics is a relatively new field in which ideas from Physics are used to analyze the economy. The principle motivation for such an application is that economic theories make rather broad assumptions about the homogeneity of various ‘explanatory’ variables in its models. In order to make more accurate models it is important to allow for non-equilibrium states in the economy. So, one can therefore allow the input variables for a model to be a function in itself whereby there is a preferred state but there are other states in which it can exist. This idea is taken from statistical mechanics, in which the basic theme is to determine what energy state a particle would want to be in based on its surroundings. The formulae are all statistically driven, so essentially you can figure out in which state the particle will have the highest probability of existing in. Similarly, the hope is to figure in which state a certain economic variable will exist in.

While the idea that one can allow the inputs to take on various values based on sound economic assumptions is seemingly promising, it appears to me that Econophysics has many drawbacks. The most fundamental problem is that Economics tries to explain how rational humans would make transactions, and the number of rational humans who understand statistical mechanics is minute. So while it seems that making broad assumptions about inputs to models does not account for everything, it is in fact the best way to think about human behavior. Further, macroeconomic issues are always riddled with political problems as well; so rather than include the complication of statistical mechanics, a far more important variable is that of politics. Hence, the scope of use for tools in econophysics would be limited to trying to predict more micro issues such as stock market fluctuations.

Now, if you are like me, by now the biggest problem that you would see with this whole idea is that it is based on probabilities. It is fair to assume that until the mortgage crisis, the economy was behaving in a way in which one would say that the ‘probable’ events were occurring. However, given that it was inconceivable that such a huge crash would occur, it is highly unlikely that any model based on statistical mechanics would have given the right predictions during the mortgage crisis. Hence, while there may be some use to these models in day trading during normal times, it is definitely not the most reliable tool to predict large crashes or high impact events. Evidence of this is the underperformance of various quantitative hedge funds. These funds, while they do not necessarily use statistical mechanics, do use ideas from statistics to predict various stock market fluctuations. Even large, prestigious funds such as Goldman Sachs Quantitative Resources Group saw very tough times during the market crash.

Nevertheless, Econophysics is a cool new field and deserves more attention. Perhaps there is a way to really use these tools effectively.

Graduating into a Recession

Starting late last year, the American economy started down a tortuous path which saw the closure of many large companies. Most famously, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and numerous other large financial institutions merged to survive. While all of this was happening on Wall Street, I was sitting in class at The Wharton School. If you thought the scenes you saw on the news were bad, trust me when I say being a senior at Wharton was among the largest amplifiers to the situation.

Around October is typically when full time OCR (on campus recruiting) occurs at Penn. Almost everyone I knew was dropping their resume for at least 100 jobs in the fear of not being offered any first round interviews. Unfortunately, they were worried with good reason. Companies were not giving out full time offers to their summer interns, when in the past this was essentially guaranteed. Other firms who had posted job listings were simply cancelling their interviews; Lehman Brothers was of course on that list. A last group of firms had shown up to give interviews, but when asked whether they intended to hire many plainly said ‘no.’ To the dismay of many, this included companies like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs, among others. The favorites in previous years were simply not willing to hire arguably the countries best in Finance.

Simply stating these facts is not enough to explain how worried some of my peers got when they found out no one was hiring or that they did not get that one second round interview that existed. People started applying to numerous boutique banks and other financial services companies. While in the past most people would have had offers rather early in the OCR process, this year many of my friends and housemates did not have jobs late into November, when most of OCR was done. To give perspective, these include students pursuing dual degrees/majors with GPAs over 3.7, a resume to be proud of. Some of my friends started looking into applying to graduate school. During this time and energy consuming process we were still dealing with classes and the infamous Wharton curve which dictates: 30% As, 40% Bs, and 30% Cs and lower. A few of my classmates would go back straight after class to drop resumes till the midnight deadline, then study for a few hours before getting back to fixing cover letters for the next day.

With all of the ‘correction’ that was taking place in the economy many began to wonder what it is they actually wanted to do with their lives. It is difficult to claim that in high school one knew that one’s calling was the exotic derivates desk on the trading floor. Most Ivy League students come into college with idealistic goals of helping the world in one way or another. This economic turmoil made many remember their original life-long goals. Others discovered or realized what it is they really wanted to do. So in the middle of the mayhem on Wall Street, students at Penn were slowly starting to take the time to think about what they really wanted to do. Eventually, by the end of the semester most of my peers had been offered jobs that they were happy with for the moment and accepted those offers. However, thanks to the time they took to think about their goals and ambitions, many have already started preparing for the next step they want to take. Many of my friends realized they wanted to pursue graduate degrees of various sorts and are now taking the time to study for the GRE/ GMAT/ LSAT. Another friend is learning how to cook so that he can eventually open his own restaurant. The list goes on…

So while many of us who have just graduated had to deal with the stress of finding a job last year, I think it is safe to say that the time we got to think over our lives was invaluable. In a better economy it may have been too easy to give up on our dreams to take the high paying Finance jobs on Wall Street. So be optimistic that there weren’t that many buyers, for those who wanted to sell their souls!