ISI Delhi semester 1 review

[Asd1995]

Hey guys, the first sem at ISI is over and I thought it'd be a good idea to let you know how things are. The atmosphere is really relaxed, classrooms really interactive, teachers (most) good, and its overall a chill place. There are 5 courses- Statistics, game theory, microeconomics-1, Mathematical Methods and History of economic thought.  

Stats- The teaching is, err, not great. Its arbitrary, not a lot of value in lectures. Nevertheless, you can learn from the books which are recommended, and those books are fun as well as of high value. You learn very basic stats, no regressions, but stuff like hypothesis testing. Idea is to set you up for econometics.

Game theory- The instructor's expertise is amazing. This consists, like most courses, rigorous proofs involving a lot of notations and maths, but is intuitively fun. Small class size enables good doubt clearance.

Micro-1 - This is all mathematics. Literally all math. There's intuition in some results, otherwise this is a proof oriented course that covers a lot of volume. Welfare theorem proofs, rationality, consumer/producer theory, preferences (using binary relations). Its taught really well.

Math- Again, all math (proofs). Matrix algebra, calculus, concavity/convexity, Lagrange analysis, optimization, limits, continuity. Needless to say exams expect precise proofs.

Economic thought- Very different. You're required to go through readings before lectures on Adam Smith, Keynes, Stiglitz, and so forth and the instructor discusses them. These are kind of long and require labour, but you learn a lot.

Overall, don't come to ISI if you hate math. Apart from economic thought, which is a beautiful theoretical economics subject, rest of it is all rigorous proofs (sometimes one proof takes 2 lectures). Faculty (most) is ridiculously good in their subject and actually helpful. Its not hard to score well if you put the work in. Some students without a proper math background struggle with a lot of math, but you (hopefully) get used to it.

I'm here to answer any doubts.

[Researcher]

Hi , Thanks a lot for sharing your experience , but can u please let us know what is the placement record at ISI D ?
 Is it correct that this year , there was no placement ?

[Asd1995]

Absolutely not. One of my seniors got placed at 18 LPA. A majority of them are placed. The last time, the whole batch was placed within 3 months,

[Researcher]

Thanks:) and can u pls tell the format of the interview that u faced

[Econenthusiast]

Thanks a lot Asd1995. How did you manage to solve the past years' for ISI with scarce resources available online that give away solutions to those open ended questions ?.

[Asd1995]

You're given a problem and you have 15 minutes to think about it, after which you present your solution to a couple of professors who evaluate you. They try to  guide you through the problem in case you don't get it.

[Asd1995]

I was pretty active on this forum for doubt clearance. A lot of solutions are provided by Amit Goyal on his website. Also follow Amit Sir on stackexchange- there are some good relevant questions he has answered.

[Econenthusiast]

Thank you. Never knew sir was active on stack exchange!

[Researcher]

Thanks :)

[Daffodils]

Which books have you been recommended?

[Asd1995]

Dudette, how's ISI-K?

For maths we religiously followed Simon and Blume. Stats was Gravetter-Wallnau for hypothesis testing and Hogg-Tanis-Rao for probability distributions. Microeconomics notes were the bible, though sir referred to writings of Rubenstein and MIG/MGI (or something of that sort, I didn't take a look at it so don't remember). For game theory you can follow Prof. Debasis Mishra's notes from his webpage, they're really well laid out.

[Daffodils]

We have computer instead of economic history which was taught by the HOD of the CVPR unit, so briiliant.
Statistics were taught by two teachers, one of them gave really amazing intuitions on regression and testing.
Math was a relief. Really chilled and we were taught by a teacher who has Padmshri to his name.
Micro and Game theory- Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Very mathematical and rigorous. The teachers were good and did a fair justice to their subject but I just didnt study well .

[Asd1995]

Sounds great. I could go on about the stature of the professors here as well. Everything was pretty mathematical! I found micro really easy because well it was all math, game theory was notationally overwhelming but managed it. Any plans of a PhD?

[Daffodils]

i will decide that after my internship experience.

[Asd1995]

Any resources for the computer programming course?

[Daffodils]

We were taught C programming. I can send you the slides if you need.

[Asd1995]

Absolutely, [e-mail] . Appreciate it.

[Rajesh]

Daffodils, yr I got into JNU, and wanna know that we are told that mainly R and stata works for our course, so, how C programming also helps? (just a brief note on this..)
and if possible can u plz mail the slides to me too?My email id is [e-mail]

[Daffodils]

R is a very good software for data analytics which requires a logical background. I really dont know how C can help but I enjoyed the course;Lets see for the next three sems.

[Asd1995]

If you know C you can pretty much learn any programming language in a short period of time