It’s an internet talking point now. A professor at IIM Ahmedabad put a clip from Dhurandhar to work to put some of the mystery out of sampling. The student who put it on video has you seeing cinema and curriculum in the same frame, and it has people talking about how we can make the hard stuff in Indian classrooms a little easier to digest.
Inside the viral moment
Prakhar Singh is the one who put the video out there. In it, you see a lecture in full swing with a bit of Dhurandhar being used as an in to survey design. ‘Dhurandhar taught me Statistics. IIM Ahmedabad,’ he put in his caption. It was a way of saying that a line of dialogue from a movie can put over an idea better than a page of jargon.
In another post, he put it like this: ‘Only at IIM Ahmedabad can a Dhurandhar scene turn into a statistics lesson.’ And they did just that, going from the story to some hard-nosed inference without any of the room’s energy or good humour getting in the way.
How the scene maps to statistics
The professor made use of the well-worn sequence to put some flesh on two parts of sampling. According to the student: ‘Win Lyari, win Pakistan’ is your Cluster Sampling. Then you have ‘Baloch gangs and Pathan gangs are fundamentally different groups’ for Stratification.
Student response and classroom impact
Word is the room let out a laugh and then got right to it as the professor put a cinematic piece to some numbers. The comments have been kind, calling it a no-nonsense way to handle something that can be hard to get your head around.
Some were feeling the nostalgia. ‘This is really interesting. Our Organization Development (OD) Prof. made us watch The Intern to identify and understand OD Interventions during my MBA. Fun course!’ said one. Another put it in perspective: ‘This is great because it happens only at the top 1-3 colleges in India, but it’s very common in the US.’
Then there are those who have seen what the faculty can do. ‘This prof is a different game altogether. Stats made easy by the professor. I remember how his classes were so superbly relatable. N only he can do this quick course updation.’ Someone else chipped in with, ‘Efforts are visible…very creative faculty.’ Or as one put it: ‘This is rad.’
One comment made it clear you’ll find this in other places too: ‘In Kozhikode as well… dhurandhar, big bang theory, money heist, friends… no one spared.’
Here is what the students say it has done for them in class:
– You pick up on the sampling ideas in less time
– There’s more of you in the room, and more of you paying attention
– When you’re on to methodology, it’s all there when you need it
Why this approach matters for institutions
If you are on a campus and trying to keep heads in the book for a core quantitative course, this is a model to look at. Put a familiar story next to some abstractions and the concept will stick. It’s the difference between knowing and retaining.
And you don’t have to look far to see it’s a trend. From a cricket score to a Marvel movie, teachers are using whatever is at hand to make sense of economics, management, or maths. They want to put the theory in a setting the student is already comfortable with.
There is a certain level of intimidation with statistics. A film like this takes the edge off. You start with the meaning and the method follows. That has shown in the IIM Ahmedabad class, no question.
Dhurandhar’s reach beyond box office
To have it in a stats lecture is a mark of how much of an imprint the film has left. Aditya Dhar’s direction of Dhurandhar and its sequel made for some of the biggest hits in Indian cinema, with a cast that includes Ranveer Singh, R. Madhavan, Akshaye Khanna, Arjun Rampal and Sanjay Dutt. It is as much a cultural thing as a box-office one.
But in at least one B-school, it is also a tool for the job. For any institution that wants to see better results without softening the rigour, this is a case in point. A good scene can make the theory something you can put to use. Just don’t copy it for the sake of it; there has to be some thought behind it.
