Saturday, April 25, 2009

An Analysis To Predict The Price Of Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 Digital Camera In India

I am quite impressed by the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 camera. However, it's not yet available in India (officially). I want to guess its approximate price, when it launches in India in the near future.

To do this, I used the following approach: I looked up the prices of various Sony digital cameras on Sony Style USA and Sony India websites. I tried to derive a pattern in the US price (in US Dollars) and India price (in Indian Rupees). As of today, 1 US Dollar = INR ~50

Following are the contents of my scratchpad:

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SCHEMA DETAILS
[MODEL NUMBER]
[PRICE ON SONYSTYLE.COM] [CONVERSION TO INDIAN RUPEES]
[INDIA] [PRICE ON SONY.CO.IN] [DIFFERENCE COMPARED TO US]

H50
$330 16,500
India 22,000 +33%

T90
$300 15,000
India 18,000 +20%

T500
$330 16,500
India 18,000 +9%

W220
$180 9,000
India 13,000 +44%

W230
$200 10,000
India 14,000 +40%

W290
$250 12,500
India 16,625 +33% [BASED ON OTHER "W" MODELS ONLY]

W300
$300 15,000
India 20,000 +33%

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Saturday, April 04, 2009

How it's possible for a 22 year old to have lived for longer duration than a 23 year old person

This thought is based on the idea of more effective / productive time utilization, the way we use it in the context of work.

HYPOTHESIS

7 hours of optimized sleep per day has the same amount of desirable effect as 8 hours of usual sleep (which can be reasonably assumed to be unoptimized in most cases), without involving any compromise with one's physical or mental health. The basis of this (unproven) hypothesis is real-life observation on myself, among some other observations.

DEFINITIONS
  • Amount of desirable effect: Sleep has some purposes (related to both the physical and the mental health), and these purposes are the desirable effects of the activity of sleeping on our body and mind. These effects can vary in extent depending upon sleeping conditions and its duration
  • Optimized sleep: When sleep takes place in such conditions as to maximize the desirable effects obtained per hour, the sleep is called optimized sleep. Posture, noise, lighting, time, type of bed, and many other factors affect the quality of our sleep
  • Usual sleep: The way most of us sleep each day. The conditions we sleep in are not the best possible, and hence almost all of our sleeps are not optimized. The desirable effects we obtain per hour are lower than the maximum possible amount achieved during an optimized sleep
Sleeping like a baby

CALCULATIONS

If a 22 year old person has been having 7 hours of optimized sleep each day for the last 10 years of his life, then he has been awake for about 3,651 hours more than a similar-aged friend who has been having 8 hours of usual sleep, without making any compromise with his physical and mental health (this follows from my hypothesis).

Assuming that the average number of productive hours (the hours which are utilized each day for work - these hours do not include eating, entertainment, bathing, etc.) per day for any person who takes 8 hours of usual sleep per day is 10, a 23 year old person X has had 40,170 productive hours in the last 11 years of his life (3,650 hours per year; 2 days have been added to account for the minimum number of leap years that must be traversed during 11 consecutive years).

Using the same methodology, a 22 year old person Y - who takes 7 hours of optimized sleep per day and hence has one extra productive hour per day - has had 40,172 productive hours in the last 10 years of his life (4,015 hours per year) - a total of 2 hours more than person X. This difference will increase as person X and Y age.

CONCLUSIONS

Assuming that most of the learning / living occurs during the productive hours (the definition of productive hours can be broadened to include entertainment, since a lot of social learning takes place during entertainment activities), the 22 year old person Y has effectively lived slightly more than the 23 year old person X - without making any compromise, and without accumulating any sleep debt.

If this hypothesis is proved to be true, it will make education about effective sleep all the more important for inclusion in the syllabus of school children. Also, optimized sleep will become another productivity-enhancing weapon in the arsenal of organizational CxOs (CEOs, COOs, CTOs, CFOs, CIOs, CMOs, etc.), and other high-ranking individuals.

Finally, it must be remembered that optimized sleep is just one out of many possible methods by which a 22 year old can have practically lived for more duration than a 23 year old. Also, this idea assumes that the situations faced by person X and person Y (while they're in their productive hours) are the same. In real life, it's more likely that these 2 individuals shall face very different situations, resulting in learnings that vary not only in extent, but also in type.

Update: Forgot to mention that person Y also has a full extra calendar year ahead of him, compared to person X, since he's only 22 yet (that's 4015 more productive hours by the time he turns 23!).

My Thoughts About Human Memory