Enabling next generation to understand what would comprise their own "Indraprastha" and protecting it

Vinay and me with few Teaching assistants and Students at Math.biz 2025

Math.biz* is my annual rejuvenation space. This was the third year of this program.

I started my sessions with students sharing an excerpt from Mahabharata. The Pandavas in their first attempt could create a "Indraprastha - A celestial Palace with vibrant city annexed" from "Khandavaprastha - A dangerous forest". However Pandavas couldnt hold on or protect their Indraprastha and gambled it away. Every student (and arent we all) of Math.biz was also seeking to create their own "Indraprastha" comprising of House, material wealth and vibrant social relationships. Are the students empowered to understand trade off's of life to ensure they also dont gamble away their "Indraprastha". The balance was the week in camp was about exploring how to build and protect what is built.

Capturing My key experiences:

1. High school students have an intuitive ability to connect mathematical concepts to finance (eg. expense curve slope to inflation). When these are brought to fore their engagement and liking for both domains improve. Atleast 4 students from hih school group ended up wanting to pursue undergrad program with a mixture of Economics and Maths / stats.

2. Finance (personal and business) is always multivariate function with each variable following stochastic paths. Early appreciation of the risks inherent in the world of finance empowers students to take better economic decisions. Parents should not prevaricate about how family finances are managed to cushion their kids from the real world challenges. Parents should openly discuss about the financial trade off’s they make and its consequences. Children become more resilient and have form a world view which is empowering. Students whose parents were cagey about discussing finances made outlandish assumptions on their income streams / returns on investment. They were bereft of ability to understand that world is full of intelligent and able competitors who would also hunt for similar income / return potential.

3. Many students are not appreciative of the importance of cultivating networks (social and professional). Parents should encourage their child to reach out to real people in the real world to seek information rather than rely on digital search agents. A child would then develop the ability to contextualize information to his / her situation rather than applying banal generic ideas.

In closing, to all parents, “financial independence and emotional connectedness leads to a feeling of completeness”. Please encourage this abilities in your child.

*a annual 10 day residential program offered by Raising A Mathematician Foundation (RAM) in association with Pravaha foundation and Mahindra university for high scool kids to get introduced to world of Finance (Personal & Business) to mathematical and statistical lens. The flyer of this program is below: