Classification of students in a class based on multiple attributes

1. Wednesday, 03 June 2009
Attributes associated with the students from different states (especially in India)
The questionnaire was conducted among 128 students of GMBA April 2009 batch at Singapore, out of which
106 reverted with their inputs. This contributes to 82% of cases examined, which I think is a reasonable
number to carry out any research.
The questionnaire consisted of 59 questions of different categories from general data to personal
background. Answering was based on rating scales, drop down menus and a variety of techniques.
66 qualitative and quantitative variables were generated from which as a research I have tried to find the
attributes of students from different states.
The students who have replied to the questionnaire are from different geographies (majority from length
and breadth of Indian subcontinent). A total of 26 different entities were found which were classified further
to come out with concrete inferences. As Indians were a majority, I have classified the states into East India,
West India, North India, South India, Central India and others (for overseas candidates). Out of 106 students,
through frequency tabulation it was found that 105 students have replied to this question. The replies of
these 105 students have been considered for all further analysis with regard to the classified states.
Students from West India formed a majority with 31.4%, followed by North Indians with 29.5%. South
Indians at GMBA Singapore formed 22.9%. Majority of these students were from metropolitan cities. The
remaining states were a minority and were in single digit percentages of the total 105 students. This could be
because the level of education at metropolitan cities is much higher than the smaller states and because of
that students are now exposed to education in Singapore.
Post understanding the distribution of students from various states, a cross tab to understand the graduation
degree pursued with the classification of state was done. Here it was found that majority students pursued
Engineering with a huge margin from others. Though Commerce was second from top, the rest were way
behind in the line. This attribute could be because, engineers after working for an average of 3-4 years tend
to feel stagnated at the same place and prefer shifting area of work. Therefore they start pursuing into
management studies. If observed, commerce students are only 11, which is because they are already
exposed to management and they normally get into lower management jobs after graduation or start into
venturing new opportunities rather than pursuing an MBA at an average age of 24. Arts, Economics, Science
are subjects which are taken by core specialists who develop a keen interest in the subject from the
beginning and therefore they still form a minority group. It is only in the recent past that students have
started pursuing careers after pursuing these off stream subjects like arts and commerce seriously as a path
to future goals. Many South Indians tend to pursue engineering as education is rated the best in the
southern part of the sub continent and top notch colleges for engineering are present there.
Graduation Stream * Stateclass Crosstabulation
Count
Stateclass
South India East India West India North India Others Central India Total
Graduation Arts 1 0 1 0 2 0 4
Stream Commerce 2 1 3 3 1 1 11
Economics 1 0 0 1 1 0 3
Engineering 19 3 24 24 0 5 75
Medicine 0 0 0 1 1 0 2
Other 1 0 3 1 2 0 7
Science 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 3
Total 24 4 33 31 7 6 105

2. Wednesday, 03 June 2009
Given beside is the position of students as a
group from the various states with respect to
the values they perceive. There were 6 values
on which each student was expected to
provide their ratings from 1 to 6 with 1 being
of highest importance and 6 being the least.
The 6 categories were:
1. Valuing Honesty
2. Valuing Freedom
3. Valuing Self Esteem
4. Valuing Loyalty
5. Valuing Trust
6. Valuing Courage
In the Perceptual Mapping diagram, the arrows are pointing towards the higher value (by number). Clusters
closer to the arrow would mean that they rate that particular value lesser than the others. If observed,
central, north are more towards the centre and south India is almost with this set of states. This is because
Indian culture is a rich mix of all the above values, and it is important for every growing child or adult to have
the right mix of it. One surprising aspect here would be the cluster named “Others” which comprises of the 7
students: Barring courage, they are far off from every value which means they rate all other values very high
compared to the Indians. It is because they would believe courage is not a very important value to be
developed when a person is high on the other 5 attributes.
On the attribute front, 4 and 5 are very close to each other as Loyalty goes hand in hand with the trust an
individual would have on another person. Freedom, Self Esteem, honesty and courage are independent to
each other.
Among the Indians, East Indians rate honesty the highest which is why across the globe, people get this
impression that people from east India are very sweet and nice. They would be honest and would expect the
same from others. In a manner they are somewhat similar to the overseas students in rating Courage the
lowest. Even they feel that the attribute is least important in judging an individual. Ideally, it would be right
for the clusters to fall on the right side of the globe and rate each attribute very high. But in the current pace
of life, there are different importance given and priorities have changed. Individuals, mainly students from
an engineering background at a B School want the right kind of a balance rather than a specialist. They have
seen the corporate world and from experience would tend to associate with more balanced people than
someone asking for a lot of one attribute. Keeping in mind, the frequencies of states, to confirm on the
position of East Indians and Overseas students, it would be preferable to look at a higher number. This would
ensure that their perspectives are as stated above and are a little different from the metropolitan cities in
Southern and Northern parts of India.
The objective function value of 0.149 shows the error taken into consideration after various permutation and
combinations of clustering these categories of states with the respective attributes.
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3. Wednesday, 03 June 2009
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