Author: Biz India

Author: John F. Loase Publisher: The Graduate Group. 209 pages Book Review by Ramu Nakliba This is an excellent work on making the right decisions on important aspects of your life. It relates statistics to life and success. In other words, how the right use of statistics can make all the difference between being happy or miserable in life, about being a financial success or a failure. The author, John F. Loase, who is a professor of mathematics at Concordia College in New York, encourages readers to take an entirely new and refreshing approach to statistics. Instead of coming up with images of numbers, tables charts and graphics when they think of the word “statistics,” he demonstrates how useful statistics is to make the right decisions in life so that you can achieve prosperity and happiness. He says: “Decisions about education, real estate, exercise, weight, cars and stocks are all statistical. The higher your level of statistical knowledge, the better off you will be mentally, physically, financially and emotionally.” As an example, he illustrates how statistics is critical in developing frugality. H points out that frugality is such a key value in accumulating wealth, as demonstrated in the highly useful book The Millionaire Next Door, which I read with such delight and relished the gems I discovered on how ordinary people became millionaires. It is also worthwhile to note...

Author: Shilpi Somaya Gowda Publisher: William Morrow (Harper Collins) – 346 pages Book Review by: Laxmi Chaandi Some beliefs in India, particularly in its villages, baffle people in the Western world. And for good reason. One of them has to do with favoring the birth of a son instead of a daughter. Why would a family prefer to have a son rather than a daughter, we in the United States would ask. This belief emerged centuries ago when males worked and produced income for their families whereas females tended to the needs of their families at home. It is still held so strongly by some people in India that the social stigma associated with it force mothers of newborn daughters to give them away or else face ostracism. Some traditions in Indian families such as giving dowry when they marry their daughters to men in arranged marriages put additional financial burdens upon households that do not have sufficient means. In some extreme cases, newborn daughters face death by burial. While the law prohibits this, the stigma and the pressure persist in some parts of India. This story is about one such instance. Kavita gave birth to a baby girl. To save her newborn daughter’s life, she had to give her away. When Kavita gives birth to a baby girl in a village in India, her husband Jasu tells her:...