There Are A Few If Any Real Companies With Negative Betas. Suppose You Find One With A Beta Of

Given data, what steps does one take to choose what distribution (poisson, normal, gamma, beta, etc.) the data should be represented by?

HiPerhaps, you should ask other questions BEFORE the appropriate distribution is analyzed. What do you want to extract from the data? What does the data contains? Is the data representative of your populations?, and so many things, way before you get into modelling. 90% of your time will be spent cleaning the data. Assuming you have done all that and you are in your 10% of your time, i.e. modelling.Few things to keep in in mind: Are we dealing with a simple trial ( e.g. check Bernoulli) or many trials (e.g. check Binomial)? Are the trials until one success ( e.g. check Geometrical) or or until n-success (e.g. check negative binomial)?Are you comparing “entities” having a lot of data with those having little data? Is yes, better to use Bayesian approach to get a fair comparison? Is the data a sample from a population? Check Normal distribution or if the data is too little, a t-distribution. Does the problem includes counting? Check Poisson distribution, which can be over-dispersed. Are you testing something until a random variable, i.e. Are you dealing with processes for which the waiting times between events are relevant (e.g. waiting time between Poisson distributed events)? Or are you using Bayesian with Poisson as likelihood? Check Gamma distribution, and use it as a prior in the Bayesian approach. Looking to study random variables within a specific interval or a non-informative prior (within the Bayesian approach? Check the beta distribution with parameter 0 and 1 for the second case. There are ways to attempt to find out which distribution matches your data (e.g., the so-called Cullen and Fray graph, albeit they were not the first to do so) but be careful with that, you should have a solid idea of what you want FIRST.Also, you may want to “let the data speaks by itself”, by using the nonparametric Bayesian approach but I’m not sure if you are there yet, based on your question, but I might be wrongGood luck

What do you say if your best friend calls you a beta-male, a liberal, and a feminist all at once?

If my best-friends said that, I’d say thank you.I have two best-friends and I hold both of their opinions in high regard. All three of us lean towards liberal (at least as much as we are allowed to, given the US’s definition of liberal as it applies to us Filipinos).Both of them have a daughter and I’d very much doubt that they’d wish to have their daughters be subjected to the misogyny that plagued their mothers and their wives. Both want their daughters to succeed and excel in the world and they actively fight against the sexism that would hold their daughters back.As for the whole beta-male thing, all three of us know about Erastosthenes[1], who was otherwise known to his contemporaries as Beta as he came 2nd place in everything he did. Think about that for a minute, he came 2nd place in EVERYTHING. He gave everyone he competed with a run for their money. Philosophy, mathematics, athletics were only some of the fields he excelled in. To say that he was well-rounded is an understatement. Imagine a guy who competes in the Olympics in track, swimming, chess, basketball and then gets his papers in physics, geography and mathematics published in peer-reviewed publications. That’s already insane. But what if he lost his Olympic events to Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Garry Kasparov and Kobe Bryant respectively and that he regularly comes in as the runner up to the winner of the Nobel Prize. That is awesome. Being labeled as the “Beta” is awesome.Now I understand that we’re not really talking about me and my best-friends. We’re actually talking about you and your best-friend. If your “best-friend” meant calling you a beta, feminist liberal to insult you, which I would guess as his actual intent, I think it would be best to find a new best-friend. There’s nothing wrong with being a beta, feminist liberal. The world always needs more compassionate, tolerant, and well-rounded people in it.Footnotes[1] Eratosthenes - Wikipedia

What do you look for in a company before investing?

I consider the Four Ms -Meaning - is it a company I’m capable of understanding?Moat - is this business difficult to get into and is the company sufficiently insulated from competition?Management - are good people running the company, do they want to achieve something amazing, and are they doing a proper job of reporting on and managing the business?Margin of safety — is the market price sufficiently below the intrinsic value of the business?If I can’t understand the business after reading the 10-K then I don’t invest. If margins are low and there aren’t many barriers to other companies entering the same market then I’m reluctant to invest. If company management is aggressively pursuing acquisitions and laying workers off then I don’t invest. If the price far exceeds what the fundamentals suggest is a fair price then I don’t invest.I’m looking for companies that I can hold for 5-10 years so I don’t want there to be obvious problems that could turn my investments sour in a short time.Look for Charlie Munger videos on YouTube for a short articulation of the Four Ms. For further reading, look for books by Ben Graham, Peter Lynch, Howard Marks, Phil Town (whose InvestED podcast is very good), and other value investing authors. Lawrence Cunningham’s Essays Of Warren Buffet is also instructive for how to look at companies and management.Or buy an index fund (SPY, VOO, etc) and save yourself some time and effort. :)

Who are the best in class full service PPC management firms?

Great question! I've been doing paid search for 8+ years. PPC is such an important marketing channel and it's so difficult to execute properly. As such, many smart folks have noticed this opportunity and have created SEM Agencies. There are so many to choose from.I've had the absolute pleasure of getting to know many SEM Agencies over the years. From my experience, some are definitely better than others. My personal preference is to go with SEM Agencies that have between 25 and 100 employees. This "sweet spot" will give you a lot of focus/attention to your account while also giving you access to top talent. Honesty/integrity is everything within online marketing so I also go with agencies that embody my core values.Agencies that impress me tremendously include:PPC Associates - http://ppcassociates.com/Rocket Clicks - http://www.rocketclicks.com/I have close connections with many of the employees at both of these agencies and am so incredibly impressed. I hope this helps and best of luck in choosing your PPC Agency!

Does pheromone perfume work for real or is it just a marketing gimmick?

It’s a marketing gimmick. If you read online reviews, there are probably more reviews that say they don’t work at all. And the ones that say they work are probably written by the seller - or they pay or give free product to people to write positive reviews.I’ve seen two articles by journalists about their experiments with pheromone fragrances. One article was written by a young woman, and the other by a young man. They were both under the placebo effect, of course. The man just used one popular and well-priced pheromone fragrance (given to him by his friend to promote the fragrance, I suppose). The woman supposedly bought a few high-priced, more prestigious pheromone perfumes, and some cheaper ones from Amazon. The high-priced placebo effect worked on her, since they helped her attract men, while the lower-priced ones didn’t.I’ve always thought placebo effect was good effect - any effect is good, right? But pheromone fragrances, as well as most things that are supposed to give placebo effect - don’t even seem to give any positive effect. In fact, more negative things seem to happen.I’ve bought some pheromone perfumes online. None worked in the least. One smelled great at first, then quickly turned to a gross “cat piss” smell. It made things go incredibly bad for me - probably because the other people and I were turned off by the revolting smell. The other two pheromone perfumes smelled very pleasant, but people didn’t treat me any differently than usual.Pure marketing gimmick. I think pheromone fragrance manufacturers should feel guilty for promoting something that doesn’t really work. Pheromone fragrances might work for some people - those who are more susceptible to the placebo effect, those who really like the smell and therefore makes them more cheery and outgoing, or a variety of other factors. And then there are people who just really, really want to believe, so confirmation bias is at play there - they take any event that would happen anyway and attribute it to the pheromone fragrance’s power.For most people, no pheromone fragrances are really going to do much of anything. In fact, in reviews, people often write that their usual perfumes get them more compliments and attention.

Where can I find the beta of Indian stocks, and what is a link to it?

You can find the beta for Indian stocks on reuters website. I have provided the link for the beta of TVS Motor. I just typed "TVS MOTOR BETA" on google and the first link on search results was reuters. Similarly you can look up for other stocks as well. Hope it helps!http://in.reuters.com/finance/st...