Excerpts from a bad day

1. Example of a random variable
2. Process
3. Clear your concepts
4. No adjustment
5. 21.55
6. 22.50
..now what?


Door to my dreamland..why is it appearing as a shadow..nothing is visible from here.

Leave Application

Lot has happened, is happening and is about to happen. I hope one fine day I'll be able to write about all the tit bits.

Last 3 months were undeclared leave. Now going on an official 1 month leave :)

Life As I Know It

There is only one you. But you are associated with many people. As a matter of fact there are many different worlds around. Mingled worlds which cannot be separated. Family, relatives, friends at social networks, actual friends, blogger friends, people associated at work place..and so on.

There are few who were very important part of the past; past which we cherish. But now they are only a bit better than acquaintances. There was a time we used to be so alike ..manners, dressings.. thoughts. But once the paths change it is no more the same. Sometimes I get a feeling that I am lagging behind ..sort of backward ..not up to date with all the stuff around ..could be brands, trends or relations. May be they were too fast or I was too slow. But one thing I am sure about is I was not stagnant. I have also moved though in different direction. How could someone running in another direction visualize my track ..my goals. They think I have not moved on. Probably now I appear dull and boring to them, have wasted my life; just because I am not so happening. Even in the present there are many to whom I appear so.

But now at this point of my life do such people and their valuable opinions about me, matters? No, it doesn’t. May be I am wrong, but I am content and happy with what road I am on. There are too many things in this life to be concerned about. How can I afford to devote my attention towards the road which could probably make me appear interesting to some. By any chance I don’t mean or intend to sound proud and self admiring. It is just that I don’t have regrets for how I am now and how I wish to fit myself in future. In fact I am and will be always thankful to HIM.. there is so much more light right in here.. in my dull and so called boring world ;) Though things are not perfect (they are never with anyone), but it is very much like I could have wished for.

PS: Watched Life As We Know It over the weekend. Enjoyed :)

new paintings

He is a dreamer, loves to imagine and then brings his fancies to the canvas. Have you ever watched him making one...

..starts with a blank canvas but filled mind. Mind filled with thoughts with which he wants to change the way this canvas in front of him looks. In a short while there are random lines-the light ones, which don't make sense to observer like me. At times he erases a few and redraws them. You are clueless about what may appear. Then there appear some prominent lines which define the picture. Slowly you start seeing the theme. You are amazed by his imagination.. awestruck by the creativity.

He has started filling the colors. Some are already there. You enjoy guessing the remaining.. imagining. It becomes your pastime, wondering which part of the palette will the brush touch. You are desperately waiting for the picture to be complete except for the fear of any color being spilled and making a blot. There could be few small unwanted drops here and there but they complete the picture. Not everything is perfect.

Right now I am imagining.. and enjoying :) 

Sure enough these are not those glass paintings, feeble enough to break by wind strokes. Wishing to withstand all storms, with actual bonds.. bonds of love :)

Intruders around

Since few days my life is bugged by too many intruders..

Cockroaches.. heading into almirah
Rats.. gnawing the plastic boxes and the food inside
Ants.. licking the butter 

and probably Worms.. in the tummy :(

Thankfully, there are no bed bugs around, for the moment at least :D

अनकही

नहीं समझा क्या कहना चाहते थे हम,

ख़त लिखा भी था तुम्हारे नाम, फिर मिटा दिया. 

जो कागज़ पे आया वो गलत था,

और जो मन में था वो भी कहाँ सही था.

कुछ न कहना ही बेहतर होगा शायद .

कोरा कागज़ भेजा है,

हो सके तो पढ़ लेना.

the fuss around

Almost a week now. I wake up with the occupied mind, who is working on how I can optimize the time wasted on this futile quest; whom do I need to meet today, where to meet him, what to tell; how can I keep peace at mind while working otherwise. Weekend was so relaxing. I felt so fresh and cheerful. It was like a free bird, my mind I mean, wasn’t tide with the thoughts of got to go there (or here). There was no burden or in fact no fear. Fear that something could have been done but I did not do it. Fear of people pouncing on me. I just want to get away. I don’t want to sound like I am giving up. But at the same time it all seems so senseless. At times it appears I am being skeptic, making an issue out of nothing and creating an unnecessary drama out of it. But what if, the thing I am thinking of really comes true. Will there be anyone to take responsibility. It will be like that’s your shit, no one else is supposed to take care of it and since it can not be cleaned, you got to stay with it now; after all it is yours. 

I really don’t want to grumble or whine over this. But I hate it when I automatically lose my spirits early in the morning. I get too dull a feeling to concentrate on the actual work. Atmosphere automatically turns tense and I cannot stop getting around in those circles. Sounds so strength-less, that I gave up so easily. So small is the level of my patience, as every one says. 

PS: As always, I wrote and it helped. Feeling better.

P-PS: To my surprise, cribbing doesn't mean complaining. I have been assuming that since long.

the way through the plastics

damage

PS: Search is on for the possible culprit. It has been doing it repeatedly and not leaving any sign. Any suggestions about whose teeth these could be?

randomly correlated

>That being up there, why didn’t HE provide us a REWIND and a REDO button. At least to EDIT those scenes, which were entirely avoidable and as a matter of fact unnecessary.

>I still love to think of algorithms. I hope the choice to do research isn’t endangered by this interest.

>I have too many complains about too many people. Is mummy right when she says life will be too difficult with that attitude.

>Some people are not as dumb and ignorant as I thought them to be.

>Writing always helps :)

medium

Suppose you have a friend, very close to you, but far away in terms of distance. You have his number; and then you are also in his friend list in one of those fancy social networks around, say FB. You are in nice talking terms, have phone calls in a month or so, frequently message, etc. Suddenly one day you miss him.. miss him a lot. What will you do.. post on his wall, that you miss him or message on his cell phone. For me such sites can never give that personal touch to feelings which we seek for. I can never get a cozy feel after seeing something over my  wall. I have always felt it only as a medium to communicate and not to express. 

PS: No offences for anyone and I already beg pardon if I have hurt anyone with such remarks.

grievances

Experiences are too many though finite. Even my complaints aren't too many. I am almost happy with almost all the things around. But there are few things which if worked on, could bring a significant change in the scenario. 

For instance it is possible to appoint people who have better understanding of obvious things.. who can think and act a bit faster ..who are ready to listen patiently and understand the situation when students come in with their queries ..who know how to coordinate between two departments. (sometimes the students are treated like a ball between two departments, none ready to take responsibility, which results in lot of time wasted at students end, going from one to another) ..who are willing to be aware of what is happening outside their cabin ..who can speak the common languages comfortably (English at least). I accept we are in a state university. But if one is looking so much forward to address audience across the globe, then they should have facilities to deal with the crowd which doesn't belong to their own state. Few things which really upset me at times are like the circulars uploaded on the web are in local language. How do you expect someone not belonging to the place will be able to understand them. More in this list are officials who simply invest hours shouting on their fancy phones.. who are found listening to songs on their office machine (on speakers) and still claim the last 2 months were too hectic.. its endless...

I have no offences against any person/language/university/department. These are some general comments as an outcome of my experience of 4 years which witnessed many incidences.. though the central character was not always me. Many of these incidences would be interesting to listen (as a story). But at the same time some turn out to be so complicated that even the mentors are unable to hold on with their patience to listen till the end. 

I am very sure that no place is perfect. But at the same time there is a lot of room for improvement. Because if perfection is attained only for t reaching infinity, then for any time point t, it is always possible to achieve a better state of work at time point t+1 (if it isn't of oscillating nature :P)

Each experience makes us learn new things about the working of this place. What these incidences have in common is the following... an initial angry/frustrated/amazed reaction (depending on the person's temperament), followed by rectification process and finally the "OMG they are great" feel with which we narrate such incidences to friends and family. Sometimes what follows is a blogpost ;) :P

mistakes :P

Sometimes it feels great to accept the mistakes which we committed in our past. In fact it makes you feel lighter, by accepting the limitations of those moments and more importantly, accepting yourself as you used to be.  We keep on trying to correct the errors and after a long time into that correction process we realize that we have not only wasted lot of time but also created a brand new worse kind of mess. Best solution is to register those mistakes in your brain cells and promise yourself that you won’t repeat them.

So don’t keep on looking at the past and cursing the person that was you. Just forgive yourself and :)

PS: Don’t interpret anything serious from this note. It was just the feel I got when I tried correcting an old and badly formatted word document which was full of mathematical equations. Wish I knew Latex then ;) :P

Bayesian Inference in problem called LIFE

Ramanathan Sir has once mentioned a very nice implication of Bayesian in the real life. When we enter a new place (could be work place or educational institute), we have some prior beliefs about the people and system, as we stay there we are ought to have experience (that becomes data). That data slowly blends with the prior beliefs and we gradually come up with the posterior set of beliefs. As we go on and on, the experiences add, and we keep on updating the posterior.. and then there comes a time when (n is large) the prior beliefs are subdued by the experiences and that’s how for large n the weight is always more for the data. I liked it. 

I have a bit variation of the theory or you may say my own version or my doubt. My concern is about the data part of it. Suppose I am able to decompose my data in to two parts.. complete-past and the very latest part (recent-past). Now if my recent-past part of the data has got a bad patch, despite of the fact that the complete-past was very well behaved, then my posterior belief will obviously show a sudden negative surge (in terms of behavior) in it. Now here comes my query. How much will be the weight given to the recent past? When we have a bad experience with anyone or anything, do we remain calm enough to still account for the previous positive experiences? what remains in mind is only the negative present (or recent-past). We almost always tend to get the negative posterior belief and suddenly the weight to the complete-past decreases exponentially. Is it fair.. Do we have ways to resolve it?

What is running my mind is something like:

Posterior = W1.Prior  + W2.Data                          and for large n, W2>>W1

where  

Data = ??Recent-past + ??Complete-past

PS: Please don't take those "=" and "+" in literal sense. I ain't adding two events or sets :P

Post PS: Sorry for complicating both (life and Bayesian) :D ;)

Revisited

Movies.
I always thought, there is no fun in watching a serious movie for the 2nd or 3rd time. In my terms if one thinks to watch something again it should be like Chupke-Chupke, Gol Maal (ones by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and not those new stupid ones), or Khosla ka Ghosla and Bheja Fry and Pyar ke side effects or if it comes to Hollywood, it could be She's the man or Alvin and Chipmunks. This is my definition of comedy, and I can watch them again and again and keep on laughing, in moments of boredom just catch a glimpse of few scenes and feel lighter. But gradually I realized I have watched them so many times that I wanted something different. So lately I have been revisiting many movies. I am simply amazed, wondering how entertaining they were despite of the fact they had serious issues. Sometimes I liked the tender treatment of the emotions, sometimes the energy of the characters, at others it was the life and its twists and turns which sounded so real or the people behind the scene made it sound real, and sometimes it is simply the LOVE ..my all time favorite topic :P ;) This is my revisited list.. Shawshank Redemption, Love actually, Letters to Juliet, Taare Zameen par, Dasvidaniya, A Wednesday. Watching these there was not a single skip-this- part feeling.

Pyramid Scheme.
Not everything so easy and fun when you revisit it. Sometimes it turns you into blues. For some reasons I have to reread my 4th semester project (something I did almost 2 years back). I thought it would be a pretty easy task. I had certain impression in my mind about so many things. But as in movies, when we watch them for 2nd time we realize that there are so many facts that we either missed them while watching for the first time or they totally slipped out of our mind in the mean while when it was kept aside. Same is here. I have started feeling that there are so many problems/loopholes in it which I am unable to understand now. Deep thought led me to certain justifications for these issues, which can not be actually justified :( :-/ We could have simply missed the details (we weren’t doing research back then, so didn’t have that researcher’s eye ;) you see).. or probably back then we had explanations for what we did, but since that part is not noted anywhere (to my knowledge) I am unable to locate what possibly they could be. I realized how clumsy and bad we were in report. The linkage between the literature and new theoretical work is too loose. It was possible to come up with project which was far better in terms of clarity and formulation. There was a nice paper which could have also been included (don’t know why we didn’t read it). I am surprised to realize how poor an M.Sc. student could be. I am even more surprised to see that our project topic had the possibility and scope of getting into advanced theories from stochastic.. like stopping times..

a gift

Many a times we are looking for a gift for someone, we are confused and then we end up taking suggestions from people around. Even I have done that so often. But today I realised that the most special gifts for special people in our life come straight from the heart. Because what our heart knows no one else could suggest. Next time you are on it, just ask your heart. Go for any cute perky thing that might make the special being feel more special.

Though that might appear a kuchh bhi stuff to others, and you might not be able to explain its significance, but the one for whom it is meant will be not only pleasantly surprised but will fall in love with you all over again..

PS: I am smiling looking at ..

tortsie's froggu

all that can be said has been said

When I was a fresher to blogs I always missed the presence of friends and acquaintance to the blogger world. Everyone around used to be stranger. But now when too many people are around, who are not so stranger, my feelings have turned around. There used to be a time when I felt so light once I penned down my thoughts. Everything moves on eventually. It isn’t same now. Now whenever I write few people are always there with some or the other kind of reaction.. some kind of a teasing remark, care and concern on my problems, questions and queries about the situation which led to the post, consoling in a don’t worry manner. Nowadays so often it happens that I am feeling bad, low, worried, perplexed but thought writing couldn’t be a right way out, because I don’t want sympathetic reactions. I miss those days when I used to write most depressing posts one could ever write, and don’t even have to care about reactions. Sometimes my space is all what I need. I started writing to pour down anything which I am unable to express and share with friends and family. If someone comes asking me face to face it isn’t serving the right purpose. Then comes the time when I couldn’t write anything for a while. Why I feel so answerable in every such situation. I don’t want to give any explanations beyond what I wrote. I remember a friend saying All that can be said has been said.

Sometimes I wonder, How will it feel like, turning into an anonymous blogger.

I know I sound insane because everyone in the world expects reaction on what he writes. I know I sound so contradictory at the same time because after all it isn’t my personal diary. You might title me as world’s biggest weirdo. It could be highly probable that it is just my false belief. Few might be let down/ hurt/upset. I am really sorry. But this was there in my heart and mind since long; and it has served as a block to lot of thoughts that I intended to write in last few months. I know few of you might even feel like disconnecting/stop-following me, because of this attitude, which could appear immature and arrogant. I accept it is rude. But as I said sometimes my space is all what I need.

All I want is to get back here and chatter any blah, like that sparrow in the balcony, and some space to fly. I am scared in posting this, but this is the only way that I can make my wings feel lighter, so that they are ready for the flight.

Journeys end in lovers meeting

Watched LETTERS TO JULIET and THE HOLIDAY recently.. One may find nothing very remarkable in them..might appear as usual love stories. But I loved them.. there is something different. I don't know what it is, but there is.. May be something which tells you what love could possibly be..

Loved the dialogues as well as songs from both the movies. The chemistry between Arthur and Iris in The Holiday was unexpectedly beautiful; and even in Letters to Juliet the best character was that of Claire. It seems the older people appear more captivating and more efficient in portraying soft emotions, than the trail from new generation. May be that was the reason I loved Driving Miss Daisy so much, despite of the fact that both the leading characters were around 60.

I accept I am crazy for love stories, but still my Statistics stacked brain is left with some ability for discretion. I would strongly recommend them, if you intend to enjoy something soothing this weekend and end up having a smile :-)

keeping track of the lineage

Long back, when I was in M.Sc, while performing the Google search for one of the professors, I came across Mathematics Genealogy Project. I searched for few teachers I used to idealize then and about whom not much was known (like GBM), but could not get fruitful results. Last year, when I was already more professional in browsing, I stumbled into the same place. This time I was with Akanksha.

The fact that, once you get in, you can go on and on looking at the academic families, made it a very appealing & captivating.  More than once we have had jaw dropping experiences looking at unexpected lineages. One feels a sense of proud, when he realizes, who is the great-grand-daddy of his own family. But to our surprise, after some in-depth re-search of website we realized that not many entries belonged to the University of Pune. Even amongst these (14), Statisticians were hardly able to make a significant contribution, despite of the fact that actually our department has nurtured so many, well known for their work. For those who were there, the information was incomplete. 

A screenshot of the record for Uni Pune as per on 5th Oct 2010

And as you might have already guessed, we got motivation for including our ancestors in this project. We started with collecting the information from departmental library and inflibnet centre about past Ph.D. students of the department. The data typically included name of the guide, year of award and thesis title. The website gives user friendly forms for entering (correcting/updating) new (existing) data. We started somewhere in October.  Data entry took quite longer than expected, because we had generations to enter; and we moved to next only when the previous was published, which generally took 2-3 weeks from the time of making entry.

It turned out to be such an interesting experience, that we not only made entries for the folks who did doctoral research from this department, but few more in the vicinity (like CUSAT, NMU etc.), who were related to dept in some or the other way. So now overall count of entries made, stays little more than 75 (initially the count we targeted at was simply 25), though information about GBM still remains unknown.

The Project is amazing place for minds, curious like ours. Nowadays whenever we hear any new name in the field similar to ours (could be author of a book/research paper or developer of an R package ), we cannot resist ourselves from having a look at his/her clan. It is so much fun to realize different academic relations; like Billingsley was Feller’s student (OMG one could never picture that, given the books each of them authored), never imagined that Krishanu could be Resnick’s (author of Adventures in Stochastic Processes) student, there is my favorite Alok Goswami as Feller’s grandson, the man (Athreya) who was explaining the extinction probabilities other day, is Karlin’s academic son…!!! Another remarkable feature of the project is the MathSciNet links it automatically provides for the people in database.

It was really an immense and very innovative effort by Harry Coonce. An effort that needed lot of courage in the situations in which he had made his brainchild sustain. I salute his spirits. To read more about the history have a look at this article. We should all contribute to the project, by submitting information. Here is a  video which could demonstrate you its massiveness just in few minutes.

Note: Sometimes the website is not accessible due to technical errors. In such a case one may get access through the mirror sites available. Like at this moment I am in through AMS.

PS: I will get back to you with another similar joint venture (by me & AK) accomplished during my hibernation. In the meanwhile, you may go ahead and sneak a peek about your to-be-clan.

PS to PS: Once again, it has been 21 days, since I blogged. Irregularity is becoming a habit. Its not that I don’t have things to talk about; I am not even blank or thoughtless this time; but I am post-less. For me writing involves two steps. Firstly the generation of thoughts in the mind and then the actual movement for annealing those thoughts into words. I guess nowadays the threshold level required for that movement has increased so much, that energy of my spirits is hardly able to intersect the threshold. Anyways for now it looks that I have managed a temporary victory over my indolent-procrastinatory-being.

So when I was out there in hibernation, I was not completely cozy sleeping. This was a glimpse of what was happening.

so much like..

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong quesiton, which can always be made precise - John W. Tukey

Came across this line, as an outcome of the re-search during the discussion, which was a by product of discussion with him. And found this so much like him. He is so correct and at the same time so abstract. 

At this moment my antennae have refused any kind of reception..nothing!! ..neither mixing nor ergodicity nor invariance nor stationarity nor regression nor conditional-expectation nor best-linear-predictor nor transformation ..forget about aggregate data.

PS: How blocked I m feeling, one can make out from the number of nors there. System badly needs to be rebooted.

enchanted

Not for a day or week,

a feeling to stay forever,

and a day..

Something that cannot be expressed in words or gifts,

Still it gives you everything, 

and a little bit more..

PS: Parts of the above lines are from MLTR. Somehow, to me these lines describe the feeling called LOVE in the best way .. keeping in account its eternity and endless horizons.

they hopeless & we helpless

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to defame or hurt any person or place.. but just to vent out my frustration.

I am sincerely looking forward for the time when administration will start appointing sensible people for the non-teaching posts; who are rendered with more sense, efficiency, briskness and most importantly who are able to feel and understand the obvious things. Why don't people in councils and committees understand that we (teachers and students) badly need such people on the other side of the table who understand our problems, who understand how precious time is for students (at least more vital than procrastination is for the staff). I am here since July 2007 and by now I am totally steamed by the lazy, idiotic, inefficient and illogical way they work. When i say they, I mean everyone, right from the people who are there to switch on water supply for hostels, to those who are responsible for admission procedures of research students. The way they behave, it seems as if they have not been even given the basic education.

I accept there are few people who are exactly the way we would be happy working with. But such folks are so less in number that they appear out of place in the bunch of these couch potatoes. In this period of 3 years or so, I have had so many experiences and  had been a witness to so many that occurred to friends/classmates/room-mates, that at least a dissertation can be prepared on the topic. But will it make a sense.. as everything is senseless here. I think this is the case with any governmental university and may be I am over-expecting comparing with the Institutes, but as the title says, I am helpless. The only time span, when these are active, occurs few days prior to someone visiting to credit the place. Even then, the issues which matter to us, appear too lame to them, for discussion.

Every other morning we have some incidence to fry us. Whatever happened today morning was again something very mundane to report here, but it actually turned me nuts.  I was totally fried, but now since already  2 hours have passed my temper has got down. I literally went and argued with lady on the gate. But she was helpless explaining me her silly argument. I felt like banging one of the heads to a near by wall; either her or mine. 

What a beautiful start for the day... when some 7-8 hours before that start you were so happy discussing and imagining about reality part of dreams coming true !! 

thats how life is .. White, Black and sometimes Grey..and then there are some beautiful colors of life which are still capable of making you smile amongst all this :)

PS: Although I said that time is precious for students, still I wasted lot of it in writing this. I am helpless since my brain refuses to work, unless the garbage inside is dumped somewhere, no matter how long it takes.

all this while

So what was I actually up to all this while.. not everything was very remarkable, except for few events. 

First one was the couple of days spent with family. After lot of uncertainty it was totally a dream come true time.

Immediately after that was LPS-V. Initially we were late in applying, but the organizers were considerate enough and gave us an opportunity. It turned out to be a wonderful experience, something which will remain in the memories forever. It was a full fledged get-together of statistical community. We were simply amazed to interact with so many great people. But at the same time their greatness didn't effect the humble part of them; not even so much that they didn't mind giving extra lectures to students like us who were new to the main theme or discussing outside the classroom. Then there was a small trek, where we got company of so many professors.. few so enthusiastic that they encouraged and offered bandages and some discussed twisty puzzles on the way. In nutshell the experience was so beautiful that I am unable to make an complete account of it. Some tit-bits about it can be read at AK's space. Have a look at few snapshots..

enthusiastic group of statisticians

tired after trek

we.. the kids, enjoying butter dosa!!

delicious south indian meals

There is lot more to share. I'll be updating more about what has been going around all this while.


PS: It feels great to get back :)

time to wake up :( or :)

It was such a nice beautiful winter night. I was sleeping cozily in my shell. Everyone knows how much fun it is, to stay in bed during winters. I didn't feel like moving (writing); actually I felt, but it was too difficult to move :( and it was more easy to stay dreaming (reading blogs) ;) :P

One feels like getting up late on such mornings. I have been snoozing my alarm since so long; and people around have been shouting to wake me up, but I was too lazy. Now night is over, even the beautiful, pleasant morning has passed. Its noon. I woke up because I needed a little push and at the same time I felt hungry too; and for feeding one has to leave the cozy comfort zone (you will get to know, what made me feel hungry for writing, in the posts to come). So I m here.

Since I woke up only a few mins back, I might not feel like speaking too much at this moment. But I assure I am back, at least for a day ..hopefully length of this day is as much as it was of the night :D