Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Of TAM Names and especially Surnames
I have been wanting to write this article for a long time now. It all started right from my school days. I have always been a very keen enthusiast at school and the best part of the day according to me was the attendance roll call. I still remember that half the time I used to be in some state of eternal bliss especially during the roll call. And in my school they never used to allow us outside the school even during lunch break. So I had to like beg the teacher every evening to give me attendance and used to get severely reprimanded for my absent mindedness.
To my great surprise this trend continued in my undergraduate days too, but not that often as in school. I then began to wonder that maybe I do have some sort of an "Absent minded Professor" personality. Well frankly I never gave more thought to this during undergrad.
Then when I arrived here at IIM Lucknow, well suddenly I seemed to have lost this beautiful trait of mine. So began the stage of introspection for the ultimate truth that has so shaped my past in the above mentioned way. And finally I have found the answer to this puzzle. The reason is TAM names.
Let me explain it a bit further. Me being a TAM, have always loved my name "Karthik Vasudevan" especially the ending of the surname that is "an". Just like Vladymir Nabakov describes to his readers how the tounge moves and touches the different regions of the pallete when pronouncing the name LOLITA, I too would like to tell you people that these tam surnames are such a phonetic beauty that when the tounge moves in a smooth curve to touch the upper pallete to prunounce the last syllable of the surname, it feels like heaven to me.
And it so happens that TAMs dominated my school roll list and I used to get mesmerised upon hearing their surnames. Some examples that I recall were Anand Ramakrishnan , Ashwin Swaminathan etc...... Come undergrad days, IIT Madras fames itself for the eclectic population that it admits(read Gults). In anycase that was the reason that my absent mindedness actually reduced marginally in college. Luckily for me most of my friends had names that were alphabetically after K, Sriram Subramanian , Sunil Dorairajan to name a few.
Now the interesting part is that here at IIM Lucknow, there is like absolutely no TAM name preceding mine that ends in the syllable "an". Thus I am nowadays able to peacefully get over with this attendace roll call chore.
In any case long live the TAM names. My only regret is that with names llike Anand , Ashwin , Karthik , Sriram , Sunil , Vijay etc... arent we actually depriving our progeny of the wonderful pronounciation experiance!!
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To my great surprise this trend continued in my undergraduate days too, but not that often as in school. I then began to wonder that maybe I do have some sort of an "Absent minded Professor" personality. Well frankly I never gave more thought to this during undergrad.
Then when I arrived here at IIM Lucknow, well suddenly I seemed to have lost this beautiful trait of mine. So began the stage of introspection for the ultimate truth that has so shaped my past in the above mentioned way. And finally I have found the answer to this puzzle. The reason is TAM names.
Let me explain it a bit further. Me being a TAM, have always loved my name "Karthik Vasudevan" especially the ending of the surname that is "an". Just like Vladymir Nabakov describes to his readers how the tounge moves and touches the different regions of the pallete when pronouncing the name LOLITA, I too would like to tell you people that these tam surnames are such a phonetic beauty that when the tounge moves in a smooth curve to touch the upper pallete to prunounce the last syllable of the surname, it feels like heaven to me.
And it so happens that TAMs dominated my school roll list and I used to get mesmerised upon hearing their surnames. Some examples that I recall were Anand Ramakrishnan , Ashwin Swaminathan etc...... Come undergrad days, IIT Madras fames itself for the eclectic population that it admits(read Gults). In anycase that was the reason that my absent mindedness actually reduced marginally in college. Luckily for me most of my friends had names that were alphabetically after K, Sriram Subramanian , Sunil Dorairajan to name a few.
Now the interesting part is that here at IIM Lucknow, there is like absolutely no TAM name preceding mine that ends in the syllable "an". Thus I am nowadays able to peacefully get over with this attendace roll call chore.
In any case long live the TAM names. My only regret is that with names llike Anand , Ashwin , Karthik , Sriram , Sunil , Vijay etc... arent we actually depriving our progeny of the wonderful pronounciation experiance!!
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Pattern in nature
It is close to five years now since I last tried mugging the value of Pi upto 10 digits. It was while preparing for IIT JEE that these things used to give me immense thrill in life. This universal constant was such a great friend that it used to keep repeating itself in endless tortuous curves inside my mind even when i was asleep. And the cool thing about this companion of mine is that it is found in plethora of situations in our lives today including such a simple one as this.
The Buffon Needle problem states that : what is the probability that a needle of length 1, thrown at random on a plane divided by parallel lines 1 unit apart, will land in such a manner that it crosses a line. And needless to say the answer contains Pi. Infact it is 2/Pi. It so happened that when I was viewing the movie "PI" I got reminded of all this. Though all I remember now of the great companion Pi = 3.1415926 is just that it can be used for no productive purpose in management education is yet another story that I wish not to embark upon now.
In any case the movie "PI" opened up a whole new line of thinking in me. The plot is a common one in science fiction: an aberration in the brain causes Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) to develop special abilities that makes him sought after and feared. In this particular case, Max acquires a deep grasp of number theory and somehow stumbles upon this 216 digit number that he thinks is the clue to the whole universe. And now he tries to apply this number in the stock market and begins predicting stock prices accurately. That is when the denoument really starts. The rest of the plot is equally enchanting with lots of twists towards the end. In all this movie is a must for all those who ever loved even an iota of mathematics for this movie just transfers you to another world through the ephemeral bliss that it provides.
And just about a week after I viewed this movie, I contracted Chicken Pox. And guess what, my mathematical brain didnot want to stop working. So for the first five days I kept noting down the patter that the Chicken Pox eruptions formed on my body. I was able to keep track of the eruptions till they were say about 40 in number, after which it really erupts sporadically and hence it became very difficuilt to keep track of.
What I found was that the eruptions seemed to follow a certain pattern. I divided my body into the left and right halves and the amazing thing was that the eruptions seemed to follow the fibonacci series. 1 on the Right , 2 on the Left, then next 3 on the right , 5 on the left etc....
I frankly wanted to actually get to know the pattern of the eruptions falling off my body too, but then alas when I was asleep, these uninvited guests departed. And this brings in me mixed feelings. Though I am cured completely now and that I henceforth don't need to be in isolation, the sorrow that I couldnot complete my experimentation still remains.
For those of you who are interested in actually finding out more about patterns in nature, check out Ram's site. I am giving a link to this conceptual painting about the irrational which he claims culminated from the his devoted efforts to estimating Pi to as many digits as possible for his Numerical Analysis class.
In all I think there is a pattern in nature and I sincerely hope that Prof. John Nats will one day enlighten me on this.
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The Buffon Needle problem states that : what is the probability that a needle of length 1, thrown at random on a plane divided by parallel lines 1 unit apart, will land in such a manner that it crosses a line. And needless to say the answer contains Pi. Infact it is 2/Pi. It so happened that when I was viewing the movie "PI" I got reminded of all this. Though all I remember now of the great companion Pi = 3.1415926 is just that it can be used for no productive purpose in management education is yet another story that I wish not to embark upon now.
In any case the movie "PI" opened up a whole new line of thinking in me. The plot is a common one in science fiction: an aberration in the brain causes Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) to develop special abilities that makes him sought after and feared. In this particular case, Max acquires a deep grasp of number theory and somehow stumbles upon this 216 digit number that he thinks is the clue to the whole universe. And now he tries to apply this number in the stock market and begins predicting stock prices accurately. That is when the denoument really starts. The rest of the plot is equally enchanting with lots of twists towards the end. In all this movie is a must for all those who ever loved even an iota of mathematics for this movie just transfers you to another world through the ephemeral bliss that it provides.
And just about a week after I viewed this movie, I contracted Chicken Pox. And guess what, my mathematical brain didnot want to stop working. So for the first five days I kept noting down the patter that the Chicken Pox eruptions formed on my body. I was able to keep track of the eruptions till they were say about 40 in number, after which it really erupts sporadically and hence it became very difficuilt to keep track of.
What I found was that the eruptions seemed to follow a certain pattern. I divided my body into the left and right halves and the amazing thing was that the eruptions seemed to follow the fibonacci series. 1 on the Right , 2 on the Left, then next 3 on the right , 5 on the left etc....
I frankly wanted to actually get to know the pattern of the eruptions falling off my body too, but then alas when I was asleep, these uninvited guests departed. And this brings in me mixed feelings. Though I am cured completely now and that I henceforth don't need to be in isolation, the sorrow that I couldnot complete my experimentation still remains.
For those of you who are interested in actually finding out more about patterns in nature, check out Ram's site. I am giving a link to this conceptual painting about the irrational which he claims culminated from the his devoted efforts to estimating Pi to as many digits as possible for his Numerical Analysis class.
In all I think there is a pattern in nature and I sincerely hope that Prof. John Nats will one day enlighten me on this.
Friday, February 27, 2004
A very good link
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~yel/Fire.html
Just check it out for the "We didnt start the Fire" by Billy Joel
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Just check it out for the "We didnt start the Fire" by Billy Joel
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Metallica
It's the sort of story that scriptwriters would get laughed out of conference rooms for entering. The sort of story that illustrates perfect synchronicity between hunger, passion and time. The sort of story that only happens every 30-odd years. And the sort of story that would approximately 500 pages to do it true justice.
Metallica. A household name. The 7th biggest selling act in American history.
Who'd have thought it when, on October 28th, 1981, drummer Lars Ulrich made guitar player/singer James Hetfield an offer he couldn't refuse: "I've got a track saved for my band on Brian Slagel's new Metal Blade label."
The truth is, Lars didn't have a band at that time, but he did that day when James joined him. The two recorded their first track on a cheap recorder with James performing singing duties, rhythm guitar duties and bass guitar duties. Lars dutifully pounded the drums, helped with musical arrangements and acted as manager. Hetfield's friend and housemate Ron McGovney was eventually talked into taking up bass and Dave Mustaine took lead guitar duties.
The band adopted the moniker Metallica after a suggestion from Bay Area friend Ron Quintana, and they quickly began gigging in the Los Angeles area opening for bands like Saxon. Eventually recording a fully-fledged demo called No Life Til Leather, Metallica quickly saw the tape whistle around the metal tape-trading underground and become a hot commodity, with San Francisco and New York particularly receptive.
Metallica performed 2 shows in San Francisco and found the crowds friendlier and more honest than LA's "there to be seen" mob. They also caught up-and-coming band Trauma, and most importantly their bass player, Cliff Burton. Cliff refused to move to Southern California: it was enough to convince Metallica to relocate to the Bay Area, and Cliff subsequently joined Metallica.
In New York, a copy of No Life Til Leather made its way to Jon Zazula's record shop, the aptly named Metal Heaven. Zazula quickly recruited Metallica to come out east to play some shows and record an album. The band made it to New York in a stolen U-Haul. Dave Mustaine, at that point the band's guitarist, was proving to be more problematic than even these loose young chaps could handle. Thus a few weeks after arrival, Mustaine was sent packing, roadie Mark Whitakker suggesting Kirk Hammett from Bay Area thrashers Exodus. Two phone calls and one flight later, on April 1, 1983 Kirk Hammett joined Metallica.
Metallica's first album, Kill 'Em All, was released in late 1983 and some ferocious touring which saw the band's reputation soar both in the US and Europe. In 1984 they went to work with producer Flemming Rassmussen in Copenhagen at Sweet Silence Studios on their second album. 'Ride The Lightning' proved that Metallica were not some thrash-in-the-pan one trick pony, the writing and sound illustrating a growth, maturity and intensity which saw them immediately targeted by major management in QPrime, and a major label in Elektra. Both deals were done by the fall of '84 and their reputation continued to grow worldwide.
Returning to the same studios in 1985, the group recorded 'Master Of Puppets', mixing in LA with Michael Wagner and releasing in early 1986. They quickly secured a tour with Ozzy Osbourne, and that stint (plus a top 30 album chart position) saw their fan base and name take a quantum leap. What had seemed so unlikely was nearer than ever to coming true; world domination.
And whats more to the whole history of Metallica is that many of my best friends are gonna witness this golden band for the first time in their lives. I really do get envious when I think of these friends. Enjoy guys. And listen do send me some photos and videos. If by chance Hetfield asks why I couldnot make it, tell him I have exams. :-(
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Metallica. A household name. The 7th biggest selling act in American history.
Who'd have thought it when, on October 28th, 1981, drummer Lars Ulrich made guitar player/singer James Hetfield an offer he couldn't refuse: "I've got a track saved for my band on Brian Slagel's new Metal Blade label."
The truth is, Lars didn't have a band at that time, but he did that day when James joined him. The two recorded their first track on a cheap recorder with James performing singing duties, rhythm guitar duties and bass guitar duties. Lars dutifully pounded the drums, helped with musical arrangements and acted as manager. Hetfield's friend and housemate Ron McGovney was eventually talked into taking up bass and Dave Mustaine took lead guitar duties.
The band adopted the moniker Metallica after a suggestion from Bay Area friend Ron Quintana, and they quickly began gigging in the Los Angeles area opening for bands like Saxon. Eventually recording a fully-fledged demo called No Life Til Leather, Metallica quickly saw the tape whistle around the metal tape-trading underground and become a hot commodity, with San Francisco and New York particularly receptive.
Metallica performed 2 shows in San Francisco and found the crowds friendlier and more honest than LA's "there to be seen" mob. They also caught up-and-coming band Trauma, and most importantly their bass player, Cliff Burton. Cliff refused to move to Southern California: it was enough to convince Metallica to relocate to the Bay Area, and Cliff subsequently joined Metallica.
In New York, a copy of No Life Til Leather made its way to Jon Zazula's record shop, the aptly named Metal Heaven. Zazula quickly recruited Metallica to come out east to play some shows and record an album. The band made it to New York in a stolen U-Haul. Dave Mustaine, at that point the band's guitarist, was proving to be more problematic than even these loose young chaps could handle. Thus a few weeks after arrival, Mustaine was sent packing, roadie Mark Whitakker suggesting Kirk Hammett from Bay Area thrashers Exodus. Two phone calls and one flight later, on April 1, 1983 Kirk Hammett joined Metallica.
Metallica's first album, Kill 'Em All, was released in late 1983 and some ferocious touring which saw the band's reputation soar both in the US and Europe. In 1984 they went to work with producer Flemming Rassmussen in Copenhagen at Sweet Silence Studios on their second album. 'Ride The Lightning' proved that Metallica were not some thrash-in-the-pan one trick pony, the writing and sound illustrating a growth, maturity and intensity which saw them immediately targeted by major management in QPrime, and a major label in Elektra. Both deals were done by the fall of '84 and their reputation continued to grow worldwide.
Returning to the same studios in 1985, the group recorded 'Master Of Puppets', mixing in LA with Michael Wagner and releasing in early 1986. They quickly secured a tour with Ozzy Osbourne, and that stint (plus a top 30 album chart position) saw their fan base and name take a quantum leap. What had seemed so unlikely was nearer than ever to coming true; world domination.
And whats more to the whole history of Metallica is that many of my best friends are gonna witness this golden band for the first time in their lives. I really do get envious when I think of these friends. Enjoy guys. And listen do send me some photos and videos. If by chance Hetfield asks why I couldnot make it, tell him I have exams. :-(
Monday, February 23, 2004
Newtonian Mechanics
It must have been about a month ago when I was sitting in one the comfortable rolling-chairs in the library of IIM Lucknow. It was around fourty minutes since I had come there and all that I could do was to just try and change my position in the chair and then try to get a good sleep.
Then when I discovered that I was unsuccessful at this too, then decided to get up and just give up this hyprocritic show that I was putting to others outside the library.
That was when the remenescants of my IIT days came back to me and I was lost into Newton's laws for some strange reason. And I was surprised that I could verbatim remember the exact wording of these laws.
Then in this idyllic state of mind, I unintentionally moved my chairs ahead. And the chair moved forward too!!!!!!. Wow I was amazed.
But then people would ask as to what is the big deal in achieving movement when force is applied. But here is where the subtelety of the experimental conditions come into play.
I had kept my legs on the chair and no part of my body was touching the ground. Also neither was I in contact with any other object other than the wall. So when I now tried jerking myself forward, I still moved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dosen't Newton's first Law state that
Every body continues to be in a state of rest or uniform motion unless otherwise acted upon by a force external to it.
And mind you, the force in this case I reckon was internal for I tried just jerking myself. So then how come old man Newton has solved this thing????????
If my friend Natesh is reading this; I am sure he will be courteous to mail me a reply to pgp19079@iiml.ac.in
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Then when I discovered that I was unsuccessful at this too, then decided to get up and just give up this hyprocritic show that I was putting to others outside the library.
That was when the remenescants of my IIT days came back to me and I was lost into Newton's laws for some strange reason. And I was surprised that I could verbatim remember the exact wording of these laws.
Then in this idyllic state of mind, I unintentionally moved my chairs ahead. And the chair moved forward too!!!!!!. Wow I was amazed.
But then people would ask as to what is the big deal in achieving movement when force is applied. But here is where the subtelety of the experimental conditions come into play.
I had kept my legs on the chair and no part of my body was touching the ground. Also neither was I in contact with any other object other than the wall. So when I now tried jerking myself forward, I still moved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dosen't Newton's first Law state that
Every body continues to be in a state of rest or uniform motion unless otherwise acted upon by a force external to it.
And mind you, the force in this case I reckon was internal for I tried just jerking myself. So then how come old man Newton has solved this thing????????
If my friend Natesh is reading this; I am sure he will be courteous to mail me a reply to pgp19079@iiml.ac.in
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Googlewhacking
www.google.com is one site that is most frequented by students and professionals alike. Thus when the students at the Stanford university decided to embark on this idea of setting up a search engine, least would they have known in their wildest dreams that they were going to create one helluva website that relieves many millions of tensions in their daily chores.
That apart, there is this interesting game that people play on google. Surprised!!!!!!!!! Yes this is a game that actually needs no prior practice. It just requires that you actually be good at analytical thinking.
Ready to go for the game. Well now then let me explain what this game googlewhacking means.
Google whacking is a novel concept wherein the player has to type two words in the google website search query (two words - no quote marks). The game ends here and the player is declared winner if his search string results in just one solitary result.
Got the idea. For example if you typed joyeuse medusatt as your search string, before this blog was put up, it would have yeilded you just one single result. This is no longer a valid google whack because my blog too will be listed on the search page now that I have included those words in my blog.
So the objective of the game is to actually try and make as many googlewhacks as possible and also spoil your opponents googlewhacks by creating additional links to that search query.
Ready then ............. go and try your hand at googlewhacking.
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That apart, there is this interesting game that people play on google. Surprised!!!!!!!!! Yes this is a game that actually needs no prior practice. It just requires that you actually be good at analytical thinking.
Ready to go for the game. Well now then let me explain what this game googlewhacking means.
Google whacking is a novel concept wherein the player has to type two words in the google website search query (two words - no quote marks). The game ends here and the player is declared winner if his search string results in just one solitary result.
Got the idea. For example if you typed joyeuse medusatt as your search string, before this blog was put up, it would have yeilded you just one single result. This is no longer a valid google whack because my blog too will be listed on the search page now that I have included those words in my blog.
So the objective of the game is to actually try and make as many googlewhacks as possible and also spoil your opponents googlewhacks by creating additional links to that search query.
Ready then ............. go and try your hand at googlewhacking.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
IIM Bangalore tops B School rankings yet again!!
This post is essentially catering towards those esoteric bunch who give CAT with the ambition of making it to the IIMs(read MBA Schools where the fees is lesser than your summer internship salary!).
The rankings of the B Schools that I have arrived at are comprehensive in nature and will serve as a good guide to the B School aspirants.
Here they are......
1) IIM Bangalore
2) IIM Ahmedabad
3) IIM Calcutta
4) IIM Lucknow
5) IIM Indore
6) IIM Kozhikode
The parameters on which the institutes were evaluated are as follows.
Each of the institutes are keyed in as a search string into www.google.com. Then certain decisive parameters are culled out of the data. These are
1) Number of hits the university gets
2) The time it takes to search
Using this a ratio of No of hits/second of search is obtained. The number of hits is a measure of the popularity of the school which can be associated with its worth. Also the hits per second is a strong indicator of the openness of the school. If it takes more time to search 100 webpages in IIM Ahmedabad than in IIM Lucknow, then IIM Lucknow is ranked higher on openness of culture!
The consolidated rankings with the parameters are shown below
I. Based on worth
II. Based on Openness
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The rankings of the B Schools that I have arrived at are comprehensive in nature and will serve as a good guide to the B School aspirants.
Here they are......
1) IIM Bangalore
2) IIM Ahmedabad
3) IIM Calcutta
4) IIM Lucknow
5) IIM Indore
6) IIM Kozhikode
The parameters on which the institutes were evaluated are as follows.
Each of the institutes are keyed in as a search string into www.google.com. Then certain decisive parameters are culled out of the data. These are
1) Number of hits the university gets
2) The time it takes to search
Using this a ratio of No of hits/second of search is obtained. The number of hits is a measure of the popularity of the school which can be associated with its worth. Also the hits per second is a strong indicator of the openness of the school. If it takes more time to search 100 webpages in IIM Ahmedabad than in IIM Lucknow, then IIM Lucknow is ranked higher on openness of culture!
The consolidated rankings with the parameters are shown below
I. Based on worth
| Institute | No. of hits |
| IIM Bangalore | 16500 |
| IIM Ahmedabad | 13100 |
| IIM Calcutta | 12600 |
| IIM Lucknow | 5870 |
| IIM Indore | 2410 |
| IIM Kozhikode | 1960 |
II. Based on Openness
| Institute | Hits/Second
|
| IIM Bangalore | 165000 |
| IIM Calcutta | 105000 |
| IIM Ahmedabad | 100769.2308 |
| IIM Lucknow | 41928.57143 |
| IIM Kozhikode | 14000 |
| IIM Indore | 12050 |
What say about this idea?
My friend Ericcson sent me this mail about some bizzare ideas being actually invited in aome contest in UK. And not surprisingly, the winning entry goes like this.... man it had to be so arbitmax to win the competetion I say.
"We know that the cat lands with its feet downside when thrown into the air. We also know that the bread always falls butter side down when thrown into the air. Ao if we stick a peice of bread to the cat's back and then put butter on the bread, then we would have achieved a perpetual motion machine that will keep rotating above the floor at a constant speed, not knowing which side to fall down first?"
So i went into this thought train about how nice and iplementable this idea was. Isnt is great to actually see so many useful thoughts floating in this world, which is deifned by some strict laws and human kind is bounded by so many principles and what not.
Atleast I for one feel that in all centres of learning, they should have one course on how to blabber what you want in a convincing way to others. This is of supreme importance to we students for that is what we will be expected to do once we step into the real world.
So cmon guys starting farting around and keep jamming to glory. Got the idea?
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"We know that the cat lands with its feet downside when thrown into the air. We also know that the bread always falls butter side down when thrown into the air. Ao if we stick a peice of bread to the cat's back and then put butter on the bread, then we would have achieved a perpetual motion machine that will keep rotating above the floor at a constant speed, not knowing which side to fall down first?"
So i went into this thought train about how nice and iplementable this idea was. Isnt is great to actually see so many useful thoughts floating in this world, which is deifned by some strict laws and human kind is bounded by so many principles and what not.
Atleast I for one feel that in all centres of learning, they should have one course on how to blabber what you want in a convincing way to others. This is of supreme importance to we students for that is what we will be expected to do once we step into the real world.
So cmon guys starting farting around and keep jamming to glory. Got the idea?
