The eternal dilemma – Accepting wrong or rejecting right

Abraham Lincoln once said that, “It is the eternal struggle between these two principles – right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.”

XLRI keeps throwing up surprises at me, so it deserves a mention in almost every second post of mine :). It has come with its fair share of joys & sorrows. Also some really important and invaluable lessons taught by the esteemed faculty of XL. One of them which has been immortally engraved in my mind is the lesson taught by our QT (Quantitative techniques) prof D.S. Broca. He taught us the hypothesis testing portion whereas Prof Mangaraj taught us Probability. Now in hypothesis testing we were taught about the errors in testing or the selection of samples namely Type 1 and Type 2 errors. When we were being taught I didnt realize the importance of these concepts. However, a few months into the course and now the sheer scale of its importance is slowly but surely dawning upon me.

Actually a type 1 error means rejecting the RIGHT and type 2 means accepting the WRONG. So in a way these 2 sides of the coin have a serious implication in all walks of our lives. Just imagine you are the manager, who has to select an employee for hiring. You can afford to reject the right person but you just cannot afford to accept the wrong person. This can also be applied in a variety of other situations. Like choosing your life partner, what if you accept the wrong partner then your life might just get ruined. What about your friend circle, even in this case these errors do creep in or you can also take the example of students for a course.  Selecting the students who have the requisite attitude, mindset and maturity to take admission in a course . This would hold good more for an institute of good repute.
In fact, we face such challenging decisions everyday and in differing forms day in and day out. We have to constantly weigh every thing to see whether what we’re selecting is right or wrong. Its not an easy decision and we do fail miserably sometimes, but that’s how life is actually; you first go through the test and then you learn the lesson !!! At-least if not serious number crunching, but XL has surely taught me something which I shall carry forward with me in my future pursuits. I feel grateful to get such inspirational faculty who have opened up my thinking to things I had never even thought of. Probably that’s the power of an effective teacher.