Some HW and Project related announcements

Hi all,
A few quick admin announcements follow, each separated by a line of hash tags. ###############################################Mailbag.I received the following email from a group today. My response is attached and is applicable to all groups in the class.

Hello Professor – Our group has assignments lined up for tomorrow and a 2 hour pre-placement talk by Microsoft as well. We would like to request you to postpone the focus group assignment submission to Friday morning if possible.Thanks, A

My response:

Hi A, I understand your schedules are very busy. I must point out that the HW was released a week ago.Granting your team an extension wouldn't be fair to other teams that have planned and prepared to meet the deadline on time.Hence, to find some middle-ground, I suggest you submit by Saturday noon by accepting a small points penalty. For instance, while we grade HWs out of 10 (later, will normalize and reweight), late submissions can be graded out of 8 or 9.I would rather folks submit late than not submit at all or push through a rush-job of suspect quality.I'll post this message on the blog to share with everybody.Regards,Sudhir

###############################################Re the project proposal submission.The project proposal submission presents a weird problem, something akin to a chicken-and-egg in that I'm asking you to plan your project even before you've been exposed to all the MKTR tools in the course.In particular, two tools of interest - perceptual mapping and text analytics - could easily find place in and add value to many of the project proposals that may get submitted by tomorrow.Hence, I would rather wait until you've been exposed to the rather powerful perceptual mapping tool before you rush to submit your project proposals [text analytics comes in only in session 9 and that's too long to wait for].Hence, your project proposal submission deadline has been extended to Saturday midnight - no harm, no foul.I'd rather your project be more thoughtful and directly applicable in business scenarios than would be possible with a constrained proposal in a rushed submission.Regards,Sudhir###############################################Re the External speaker:Mr Milind Chigupaker is a former IBM analyst who rose through the ranks to make it first to mid management and then to the opening rungs of senior management before he quit to focus on his own venture.I'm honored to be able to say, I'm a co-founder in the venture - Modak Analytics - that does (surprise, surprise) high-dimensional predictive analytics.The talk is set for 10-Nov Sunday 4-6 pm.Sudhir###############################################Re the Session 5 HW.Sorry about the delay in posting the HW. Henceforth, all HWs will be due on the Saturday of the following week. So, Session 5 HW will now be due by 9-Nov, midnight. I would however strongly encopurage folks to not wait till the 11th hour, if possible.Sudhir