Sunday, November 26, 2006 

Murphy Meets Me

We come across incidents in life for which we hardly would have given a faint chance. Once the event happens, we only combat our luck as to how we got to experience them. It must be at least four weeks now; nature had candidly remarked that I added one more year of my experience since I landed here on earth.

Oops, it is not strange that I grew older. It was bound to happen, neither was it a stray incident. It was different from my last four birthday’s atleast.The moment it struck 12, one of my close chums rang me to wish me and then another followed. I felt like a baby again, I confessed that I was younger than what most people thought and gradually gave leeway to sleep.

I was happy that nobody dare aunt kick me at places where I had least fat. The following day was a bit of surprise to me. People around me completely lost track that I had reinvented myself one more time. So many of my friends called me to wish me about the advent of light festival but their memory defied my new age.

It was the concurrent events that impressed me. I was only reminded of Murphy's Law "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”. To be candid, I hardly remember people's birthday except who are very close to me. I totally depend on birthday remainders. You know what, all the birthday remainders failed then.

Event1 (E1):
We always send a birthday remainder in our BIM group and it did not find my name.
Event2 (E2):
The HR our company sends birthday remainders and it did not find my name.
Event3 (E3):
The Orkut birthday remainder didn't work for those particular days.
Event4 (E4):
It turned out to be long weekend cascaded with the festive holiday.
Event5 (E5):
I have a peculiar case, my certificates show different date to my actual DOB and it confuses many people.

Now I am going to assign probability to them

P (E1) =1/100 (approx 100 people in my batch)
P (E2) =1/500 (approx 500 ppl in my company)
P (E3) =1/300 ~ (1/365 - 1 day in a year)
P (E4) =1/10 ~ (5/52 - Weekend cascaded mega festivals)
P (E5) =1/100 ~ (2/200 - I know at least 2 people who have the same kind of problem in my college)

Now the joint probability of all this happening

=P (E1)*P (E2)*P (E3)*P (E4)*P (E5)
=1/100*1/500*1/300*1/10*1/100
=1/30,000,000,000

May be that was what Murphy predicted!!

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10:16 am | |

Thursday, November 23, 2006 

How about a date with disorder ?

A post after a long time.I gonna take you for a ride about disorder which in the view of a sect of people is strangely in order. I keep wondering at people who keep their imagination in high gears looking to model random process. Can we ever model the shape of clouds or think about replicating the contours that are seemingly crazy figments in our perception?

To understand the observed's behavior, it needs lots of intellectual courage and a smart brain to identify the variable tweaking it.Onething for sure; most of nature's system is non-linear. That leads to the inevitable question, are things so complex that it cannot be modeled or is it that, we have camouflaged ourselves to simplicity by overlooking simple rules?

Have you heard of Chaos theory? Well if you have not, then I shall take the liberty to confuse you. Chaos theory refers to an apparent lack of order in a system that nevertheless obeys particular laws or rules. The two main components of chaos theory are the ideas that systems - no matter how complex they may be - rely upon an underlying order, and that very simple or small systems and events can cause very complex behaviors or events.

There was crazy guy who was trying to study the cotton prices a trying to predict the cotton prices, the more he tried the more he failed.Atlast he came across a great observation, there was an underlying similarity between the change in monthly and change in yearly cotton prices adjusted for scale.

Each particular price change was random and unpredictable but the sequence of changes was predictable independent of scale. Curves for daily and monthly price changes matched, the degree of variation had remained constant over a tumultuous 60-year period that saw two world wars and a depression. Although it was almost next to impossible to predict the local price the system's behavior as a whole was close to deterministic. In Sierpinski's lingua the system is locally random and globally deterministic.

Have you ever wondered how the fern/pine tree looks similar to its branches, they in turn are similar to the leaves and they are in turn similar to the veins of the leaves. I don't know if this inspired somebody to think of fractals. Fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced/size copy of the whole.

Fractals have something very important to say, that things are self-similar. May that is the geometry of nature and to be more refined what is in the microcosm in the macrocosm. Nature has simple elements which create complex elements using very simple rules. No better example than basic genes which are self similar but create complex beings like humans. How fascinating isn't it? The moral of the story, what is apparently envisaged as disorderly is in fact very orderly, just that we don't understand them.

Whenever things comeback and remind us of similar things, we are confounded by the perception that life's a full circle but we feel that they are not exactly the same. Fair enough, true they had some other interesting observation about dynamic systems.

In dynamical systems, an attractor is a set to which the system evolves after a long enough time. For the set to be an attractor, trajectories that get close enough to the attractor must remain close even if slightly disturbed. Geometrically, an attractor can be a point, a curve, a manifold, or even a complicated set with fractal structures known as a strange attractor.

Look at the trajectory of a ball tied to the end of a thread which is slowly winded around our finger. It never repeats its path nor does it overlap but the paths traced are self-similar and it has the centre of the spiral as the "strange attractor”. This is the example of a simple dynamic system. Think about the complexities perceived, if the ball traverses a path which has two centers and the paths are never repeated nor overlapped and yet self similar which is nicknamed "Lorenz attractor".

That’s how most things in life and nature are, disorder seamlessly falls in love with order. So the next time you think things are complex, we need to acknowledge that we did not understand certain simple rules.

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10:14 am | |

Monday, November 13, 2006 

Suddenly I find myself

Suddenly I find myself

breathing Chaos
fighting Depression
chocking Emotions
seeking Illusions
bundling Despair
venting Gloom
singing Solace
investing Pessimism

all omipresent in my mind
without any reason
how strange ?

7:09 am | |

Sunday, November 12, 2006 

Your Attitude Sucks!

I still vividly remember this statement “Your Attitude Sucks!” which was announced to the students of our college. It was the vocal chords of a visiting professor which uttered this after witnessing an array of presentations. I am not going to salvage some pride by negating the statement; we have heard this from enumerous number of teachers, only that they had the courtesy to change the semantics and tone during other occasions. It’s natural that teachers expect more from us and we never want to disappoint them by giving them any quantum of surprise.

We had to slog ourselves to get into a good college and all we did henceforth was to present a turncoat after that. We were assiduous and talented on a local individual level but somehow choose to avert high levels of enthusiasm on a global group level. Could be that every individual concedes to the "collective freewill" of the group. We were suddenly adhering ourselves to the "group behavior", as usual there were exceptions here and there.

I could somehow recollect a conversation which I had with my friend about the difference in attitude between North Indians and South Indians. North Indians are generally the happy go type, broad minded and live their life enjoying moments in the present. South Indians are conservative, they live their life as if their lives are going to start after 40.They are more concerned about savings to make a great life in the prime of forties.

What could be the plausible reason for such a starching difference in life styles? One of my South Indian friends who had spent most of his time in North India dissected it for me.History reveals us one thing for us, it was North India which was most affected, be it Invasion by warriors for centuries now or the partition which happened recently. They have been tormented by more pain, their living was more uncertain than the bunch of people who spread the southern part. That’s what inculcated the culture of living their life to the moment than wait for some fine day far from the present.

There was yet another observation made by another friend, people in North India somehow tend to somehow identify people by their religion. There is a latent feeling of hurt tracing back to the Islamic invasion. The culture of people is more driven by the experiences of the past.

Have you ever wondered why Australians are so competitive? Japanese are hard working?, Americans mean business when its business?, Marwari's value money so much?, Jewish are powerful?. All have different stories to their chemistry.

Isn't it fair on us to give and get good experiences?

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10:36 am | |

Tuesday, November 07, 2006 

Freaked by Free will

When something uncontrollable happens, people always blame fate or destiny for it. There are other occasions when we attribute freewill when we are able to take things into our control irrespective of the situation. It seems contradictory that a person can exercise freewill when the outcome has already been programmed. If such is a case, choice is just an illusion.There is also a tendency to ascribe events to the invisible hand of the supernatural.

I really see God to be a real unimaginative/dull guy if he has already determined our fate and we are just playing our roles to the predestined outcomes of the game. He would have played a fair part in betraying us, giving an illusion of having choices.Onething for sure; he must be one pure genius to have designed various systems with such level of fascination and awe.

It would be unfair to blame the super designer for none of his fault. It would be equally unfair if he helps out a select few who seek his help because he would become unfair for not having helped a person for not seeking his help. In my kind opinion he can give only the ability and it is all up to us to apply it.

I am not here to deny or mock at fate, it would be equally fallible to do that. I see fate to be just the set of imminent outcomes which are the consequence of our past actions. We are facing something because we have construed them by our past thoughts, action and will. This is no path breaking concept; it has been preached by all the philosophies and called karma as well. In short "As we sow so shall we reap".

Isn't there any respite? What if we want to change our course of action? We can really take a course of action but not without the constraints of options generated by the outcomes of our previous actions which I can safely term as fate. We endlessly face a world with options created by our own pasts but possess the freewill to choose our options. To be precise we program our fate and freewill.

Let us suppose that a person is at the point A now, and he has the freewill to move in any direction and suppose that he moves to point D intially.Now he has again the freewill to move in any direction although he has a liking to move to point F, but chooses to move to point E with his freewill for some reason. Now he decides to move to point F with freewill but with a difference, he has the current options are certainly influenced by his past actions.

He could have taken the shorter route at D to F, but now that he has chosen to move to point E, he had to travel some extra distance to reach F.Now we can say that he would still reach F , but he would have spent extra time or extra energy (speed) to reach there.

We have to certainly face the effects of the causes created by us and that does not deny us the freedom to liberate ourselves from the clutches of our past actions by our own will. This is what I mean when I vouch that we create our fate by our own thoughts, will and action.

I have some interesting questions? What determines the ability to see and generate options? What makes us to choose a particular course of action?

It is our perception that gives us the ability to do so. As usual, the age old story, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. Our perception is limited by our field of experience. We define our courses by the limitation of our perception perse.

Till now I just discussed about the freewill and fate of a human in an isolated way. We obviously interact with the system around us and each of the individual components has their own freewill and fate. I can't resist telling the impact of one's freewill on the other.

What about our famous butterfly effect which refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately causes a tornado to appear (or, for that matter, prevent a tornado from appearing).

I certainly feel that even our system as a whole has is subjected to freewill and fate. What about the possibilities of applying freewill and fate to the creation and creator (nick named god)?

10:35 am | |

Wednesday, November 01, 2006 

What is a degree worth?

I have changed courses like random horses and I did them with atmost conviction that even chaos has some order, as does randomness flourishing uncertainty.I was particularly talking about my education although my life remains even more elusive.

I giggle at myself as to how I became a Production Engineer after specializing in Computer Science in my senior secondary. It remains even brain bare as I mastered in Finance and Systems in my M.B.A after working in an Auto ancillary for a year. Now, I want to become a journalist leave alone my affection for philosophy. My brain still dreams of becoming a global economist.

I don't whether I am confused now or was I confused earlier? Am i seeking what i really want or was i directionless earlier ?.Have experiences changed my courses or is it that, it is the natural way of life, only that I am trying too hard to blow it up.

One thing for sure I would hardly apply 10% of the knowledge I had acquired in my schooling. I shall pledge that I never questioned things in depth during my schooling or was I given the liberty to do so by my teachers, they too were grinded from the same system. I have read logarithm for so many years and it took me so many years to understand the significance of base "e".

I guess it was the same case with all the subjects which I had learned so far, right from under graduation to post graduation. The system had moulded me to recollect what was taught and religiously reproduce them in the answer sheet and still flaunt superior grades. I have now discussed the process aspect of the education.

Now, I shall dwell on the other aspect of specialized education. I don't know what sense it makes for a Production Engineer to specialize in finance and end up in equity research betraying the knowledge and skill I had acquired in the four years of education. I always seek solace that an engineer has a better ability to understand the process than a Chartered Account / Commerce graduate. It gives me greater embarrassment when I have to reveal that they are better, at least that is what my fellow colleagues in the form of CA's have taught me in the last year. It takes more of common sense to comprehend the business process and immense inquisitiveness to learn and excel.

It is really amazing to see how gold medallions/ top rankers in a particular domain choose to work in a completely diagonal field. I am not blaming them and it is not fair to do so. Isn’t it complete futility when we fail to apply the knowledge we acquire in a particular area. I can only giggle at people who start an hue and cry about IITians who brain drain our country. When are we going to realize that the brain drain disguised in non relevant profession selection. All this appetite for salary disparities would go away with the recent cross industry normalisation.Would our attitude change then?

It is shameful to know that only 25% of the engineers out of colleges are employable in jobs (including call centers).Our educational system is screwed up somewhere, are we just producing people who call speak tolerable English. Are engineers and Business graduates the only way of life? Is professional educational the only sacred society. Would there be someday when becoming an anthropologist or an historian be common?

We can give answers that professional education improves the thinking process and problem solving skills if we sideline the relevance of the knowledge. I hardly can see any path breaking inventions in India unless we streamline career with relevant application. We should focus on understanding rather than diversifying our risks in multiple domains. It is nothing wrong in being jack of all trades but it is wise to be king of at least one.
We shall bear the tag of highly paid coolies till then.

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10:29 am | |

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