Bunch of Eunuchs – the Indian Government ! April 30, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, politics, rant.add a comment
And all the “mighty Indian State” can do is this.
I dont say nuke Afghanistan – but atleast some mechanisms internally should be put in place to prevent repeated occurences This post goes some distance in providing an alternative.
In praise of statistics April 28, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in statistics.add a comment
My potential alternate profession.
Okay, its not quite likely I would do that – but it would rank high among many choices I have. It brings two things I love – patterns among numbers and the game of cricket.
There have been several funny quotes on statistics and statisticians. I dont quite take it when people say that statistics dont reveal anything or that they can be used to prove anything.
Firstly, they reveal a lot if you know how to measure them. In Cricket, well, averages say a lot – there is no single better measure of a batsmen’s ability. If you say that Player X is inconsistent, you can pull up the variance. If you say that statistics dont reveal the circumstances of the innings – well, you can meausure much of that too – runs on the board, status of the match, status of the series, wickets, past string of low scores, home ground, strength of bowling attack, experience of player – there are a whole lot of measurables involved. What is required is that you be creative enough to decide what these measurables are. The problem then is not in statistics but your ability to use the tools.
Same is the reverse problem. Given some statistics, drawing conclusions requires you to know what exactly these numbers are, what assumptions were made and how accurate they are ( possible error etc. ). If you are smart, you cant be fooled ! If you can ask the right questions, you cant be mislead.
So what eventually is required is that you understand the domain – the better you understand the problem, the better is your ability to find measurables and also find loopholes when presented with a table/chart.
I dont ofcourse say – numbers are all there is, instead I am saying that there is more to it than meet the eye. While Americans and much of western civilization is about experiments, trials, measurements, interpretations and documentations, its not so in India where we have no respect for numbers ( okay, we discoverd the zero, but I am talking about data/statistics, not numerals ) – we are more happy to go by gutfeels ( which in some sense is probabilistic ( bayesian ) ) – the two often differ at times. But thats for another post.
For now my only take is that people do sumnarily dismiss statistics as a conspiracy hatched by statisticians are like those who dont like a particular car because they dont know how to drive !
How to make an utter fool of yourself April 27, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in KREC, education, rant.1 comment so far
I discovered this recently – well, I rather saw someone discover it for himself just a while ago would be a better way to put it.
Go here to know how the USENET community can be so unforgiving of newbees who arent careful enough to follow time honored conventions ( like reading the manual ) or trying out something before asking for help.
The reason I quote it here is that I get mails very often from friends, acquaintances and friends/acquaintances of acquiantances some who I havent ever met and am unlikely to ever meet. ( Some of these I resolve never to want to meet once I read their mail, I will mention why later on) . These are mails asking for some help/information/tips etc. about applying for graduate school/review SOPs/ask about universities to apply etc.
And this is how I handle the issue. Over the years I have maintained an archive of mails I received and replied to and collated enough material of my own and my typical approach is to send that material through email first and then solicit questions. This is simply in going with the philosophy of a FAQ - that lots of people tend to have similar questions and that we can go quite a length solving the problem by just seeing how others have solved similar problems.
Understandably, people still have specific questions that dont find a place in that material that I am more than happy to take. Sometimes however, I am surprised people return with questions that are not inane by themselves but that can be easily googled for. Now dont get me wrong – I have been involved in several application processes and its been a pleasure helping people. Sometimes however, you get a feeling that your ’services’ are abused. Here are some of the most unanswerable or not-wanting-to-answer type of questions I have received -
“Should I do a MS or PhD ? “
“Whether Indian foods are available in City X ?”
“Can you give me a list of faculty members who are working in area X in University X ?”
To put on record my frustration I would like to quote from a mail I wrote a while back -
….with this is that most ppl ask u questions as if they have the right to do it – they do it without doing any background research on their own – to save their time and waste ours……they ask open questions…ask stupid questions …ask vague questions….ask long essay type questions …
i strongly recommend that their questions be
1. specific
2. backed by some research done by themselves
3. reasonable – if they are reasonable enuf, they know what questions are reasonable.
in other words…we gotta be the last resort – not the first casualty….!
The internet has thrown up a vast array of sources and they should be made use of. And its not just me – several graduate students host a separate section on their website – either providing advice or just ranting about why they cannot – mostly for above reasons.
This is an excellent one.
And this is another.
Needless to clarify, the purpose of this post is obviously not to discourage my good friends with whom I go to considerable length ( and even getting emotionally involved in their issues 
) or even to genuine well-meaning and *reasonable* individuals. Those who matter will understand this, and those who dont understand, well, dont matter.
Kudos Rajat ! April 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in education, india, people.add a comment
Rajat Gupta is one man to appreciate. He knows a thing or two ( and more ! ) about institution building. This man built up one up – the ISB – from scratch and is on the way to another.
Personally, I have no patience with people who attempt to cover up their selfishness and/or incompetence with their disguised/cultivated cynicism.
Some excerpts from his interview with Shekhar.
I was admitted to the IIM, but I went to Harvard because I had the best jobs coming out of IIT and had an admission in IIM. About Harvard, it was one of the best business schools in the US and everybody said there you can’t get any financial aid and can’t get an admission without experience. But it so happened that they not only gave me admission but also gave me full financial aid. I didn’t have any money to go. I remember the job offer I had was at ITC. Haksar was the chairman at the time and I sent him a letter saying I can’t join. He said nobody has turned us down so you have to come and explain why you can’t join. He’d sent me an air ticket to come to Calcutta. That was my first flight in my life. I told him, look, either I join you or I can go to Harvard Business School. And he said, go to Harvard Business School, he was a graduate himself.
Here he talks about our socialist mentality – which basically says – the cake is fixed and forever – we can only make smaller and smaller pieces from it until none is left.
I don’t believe you can solve it by quotas. I believe in expanding the opportunity, expanding the supply. If there were 10 times more IITs or IIMs, there will be opportunity for everyone.
Why I love economics April 15, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, people.1 comment so far
“Imagine that there are two countries – Japan and the United States. Japan sits on the top of a hill and the United States sits at the bottom. To get US goods to Japan, one has to hire porters to carry the goods up the hill. But the Japanese can put their products in a chute and let gravity do the work – costlessly transporting Japanese goods down the hill to the US market. Not a level playing field, you should be thinking. Japan is clearly in the advantageous position. Not so fast, I caution the students. Who pays for lugging the US products up the hill? Why do you presume it is the US and not the Japanese? This should get them thinking about elasticities of supply and demand. If US goods are in short supply and are desperately desired by the Japanese, while Japanese goods are
abundant and not much desired by Americans, then it is the US at the bottom of the hill that is in the advantageous position and it is the Japanese who pay for the lugging of the goods up the hill. If the Japanese build their mountain artificially with trade barriers that make it difficult to ship Washington apples to Japanese consumers, and if the Japanese consumers would pay any price for those apples while Americans could care less about the latest Sony gadget, then it is the Japanese who pay for the barriers, not the Americans. So be careful when you put rocks in your harbor. And be sure to wear the right kind of glasses when you are viewing the playing field. What looks tilted one way with your regular glasses may be tilted the other way with econ-oculars.”
Thats an interesting thought there.
This comes as a part of the a detailed book review of Friedman’s book – The World is Flat. Now, I have quoted another ‘review’ of Friedman ( not just his book ) before here, but this is no parody – this is written by a UCLA economist. I dont think any serious economist has found this book anywhere near making sense – now, that its in the NYTimes best-sellers says something about -
a. how Pulitzer Prize winners can get away with producing dubious works or plain trash.
b. how NYTimes best-sellers’ list mustnt be take on the face value
c. how readers are just too overwhelmed by the India-China story. Yes, we know its happening – but its not as easy as Friedman thinks its happening
d. readers can be fooled by his metaphors that he himself promotes so much that I ( and am sure many more ) have sworn never to use them again.
An evening forever – 1 April 15, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in CMU, india, movies.add a comment
My hands are sore – I have spent the evening clapping away. Its been one of those landmark evenings – was at a concert by Ustad Amjab Ali Khan at the Carnegie Music Hall here in our campus in Pittsburgh. He was here on a concert organized by AID ( Assoc. for India’s Development – more on them in the next post ) playing with his two sons – Amaan and Ayaan.
The man is a genius. He is so soft-spoken, he almost sounds like an apologizer every moment. His gentle smile that he uses to affect to encourage his co-artists, his very presence in the hall – sitting there in the center of the stage, that orange kurta that stood out, the stunning acoustics at the Carnegie Hall – it was a night to carry with you for a few more nights to come.
The audience was in complete awe of him – I have never been at such a gathering before. He came in to a standing ovation that lasted nearly a minute. Unseen. I have no idea whatsoever about classical music – so I may not be able to describe or critique what he played but I know that for those 2 hours I was completely spell bound by the man. When you look at no one in particular and smile, when you find yourself gaping looking at his fingers and how fast they move, when you stop clapping only because your palms are read and you cant take it anymore, you know that you are in love with this stuff and are witnessing something unprecedented.
He played three compositions – the 2nd of the three was a dedication to Lord Ganesh – it was probably the best solo piece of the evening. When it ended people stood up and a roaring applause followed that lasted nearly 2 minutes. He played another one and left and we thought it was over. It was only an intermission.
After the intermission, his two sons came on stage – they started out not quite so extraordinary but soon picked up tempo. Amaan in dark red kurta and Ayaan in a green kurta – on a pseudo-jugalbandi – again attracting applause for nearly a minute. And the end of it, Ayaan said, “Normally, the senior artist performs last but this time my guru and father insisted that we do it this way. Now, for the last section of the day, I would like call on stage again – Ustad Amjab Ali Khan !!”. The crowd erupted ( yes, now I know what that expression really means ) – they really did erupt, welcoming him to another standing ovation. After performing a Bengali folk song solo, he went to the final piece – the jugalbandi – and yes, that had to be best – 2 on tabla and 3 on the Sarod – sons and father – what a sight that was and what sounds ! Its one of those highs you rarely experience and you want it go on forever. Ofcourse it didn’t.
Lets get one thing clear – what he is requires a lifetime of dedication, nothing less will do. That is why there are so few of them around. It involves huge sacrifices, shutting yourself to a whole range of other experiences. Why would someone want to do that – unless ofcourse you love the stuff so much so that you can spend hours, days and every moment thinking about it. And herein lies the truth – its hard, very hard to do so without for a moment asking yourself that question we so often ask in our everyday life – “Is this worth it?”. Its one of those scary questions you will never want to be in a position to ask yourself – not to say I am averse to self-examination and reexamination, but its too fundamental a question and if you falter on that one, if your answer to that is in the affirmative, you have to start from scratch.
Is there something I can keep thinking about day in day out, dedicate my life without ever asking myself the dreaded question? No. I have not found any such interest yet. I am far too restless to remain excited about one thing all my life. And I know none who has. I will never know what a musician’s mind is like – not because just I cant think in terms of music, but because more importantly, even at a higher level, I don’t sustain a single-minded devotion to anything to the degree that musicians like these have for their music. They love and worship it with an intensity most of us here will never ever know.
For all that work and sacrifice they put in all their life, one can never grudge their success. Don’t give me the Khans and the Kapoors or any of these other contemporary Bollywood jokers! Give me a Ravi Shankar (and possibly with Zakir Hussain) concert at the Carnegie Hall in New York City – what wouldn’t I give for him !
Taxing Times April 14, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, CMU, contemplation, economics, humor.add a comment
I just did my taxes this week – about after 1 hour of filling the forms, 4 envelopes go out to 4 different places – Federal Tax, Pennsylvania state tax, Massachussets state tax ( I was in Boston from Jan – May 2005 ) and the Pittsburgh city tax. And I must admit I feel good paying these taxes ! Yeah, I am probably insane, but somehow I feel like a responsible citizen – when I obey a law – especially one that some people find really hard to and would do anything to evade.
With April 15th being the tax time ( and taxing time ) in the United States, there are several articles in the media about various aspects of taxation. My casual interest in economics has only become deeper reading these articles and filling those forms. I used to wonder how people study taxation policy for years and write thesis on it – I wondered if there was so much at all to study – other than answering ’simple’ questions like – whom to tax, how much to tax, what to tax and how to tax.
Well, questions they are, but simple they aren’t. Its amazing how taxes ( and incentives – these days my favorite word ! ) can matter so much as I discovered reading some articles on this topic – they aren’t talking so much about details of taxation but opinion pieces on some aspects of it. I will rest of the post to link to the articles I read or am planning to read.
Why a mugger is better than the IRS !
( IRS – equivalent of the Income tax dept. in the United States )
What will you do (to me) if I dont pay taxes ?
Have a good time ( or a taxing time ) depending on whether you think taxes ( or reading about them ) is good for you !
Other identities – II April 13, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in blogging.add a comment
As I mentioned in this post, I maintain 2 other blogs in addition to Epistles and I described the origin and purpose of one of the two – thelittlerocker. In this post, I fill in with a few notes on thebroadcaster.
The broadcaster has entirely an different origin and an equally different purpose. That is where I post interesting articles/links that come across during my several hours of reading newspapers, magazines, blogs and random websites online every day ( 1-3 hrs at times ).
For over an year now, I had been sending the same material ( that now appears on the blog ) to a friend of mine Rajaram through email. This was partly casual as we generally do often as we forward mails, but more importantly it was to help Rajaram’s business school application process. These articles cover a range of topics – economics, history, politics, India, US domestic issues, cricket ( very rarely ) and popular science, sociology, media, evolution and psychology – and I thought it was a good ‘stock to invest in’ for his group discussions and interviews etc. This was May 2005.
Over time though it appeared that there as no reason to restrict the recipient of these set of articles and I was open to the idea of adding other friends of mine – who can afford to find time to read at least some of them. Over the next 8 months, this list had grown to 16 people – some of who were friends of my friends I had never met. Articles went out almost everyday – at a significantly higher rate on weekends – but overall at an average of 45 per month.
On one hand, it was a good feeling to be doing this – to be in some small way serving a larger community as I enjoy reading on the way – it could have not been more productive and meaningful ( in that larger sense ) than that. On the other though, as the size of the list grew, the hesitation in sending out articles also grew. This was because it was hard to find articles that I would imagine would interest such a diverse group of friends – and I had no intention of spamming people anyways! For. eg. there were often articles on US politics or domestic/economic issues which would have been rather out of place for an audience in India.
And this is where the blog came in. I post here all articles that I am absolutely sure can go out by email to my friends. In addition to those, I also post other material that I read that may not interest a majority in a large sample – so those in the mailing list or others may find something interesting to read here that didn’t otherwise come in their mail. Occasionally, I do build a context by posting comments or relating them to other articles I have seen elsewhere or posted before. But mostly I don’t go out of the way to make them readable by cross-referencing or linking extensively.
And as with several other things I am particular about, thebroadcaster serves as an archive as well – valuable one at that – timeless one at that! When I look into my mail archive from last year, I notice how the nature and topics of articles I have sent have reflected two trends – of the current news and of my own interests. A few years hence when I sit down to do a statistical text categorization and topic tracking, I might find interesting trends here !!
thebroadcaster therefore has no well-defined and/or extensive readership – and given its nature, is unlikely to ever have one !
We dont want to "be like this wonly" April 10, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, rant, sport.add a comment
Why are we like this ?
When I say we, I mean – the cricket board and we, the people who let this people run the board ! Who do go after for that incident ?
Considering just the circumstances – tickets no being refunded – it is hard to punish the spectators involved. Yes, there is no justification to violence, none whatsoever to destroying public property, TV cameras belonging to a private company that had no responsibility for the abandoned match and all the acts of bonfire and throwing bottles that eventually hurt the city’s reputation afterall. But I have given up on the common man – we Indians feel offended very easily ( ban this book, that movie), our “culture” is contaminated too easily ( stop unmarried couples from doing this or that ! ) and we are too prone to destroying public property.
A possible reason for the latter – how many Indians pay their taxes ? 2 percent. Coming to think of it, public property is really a misnomer in some sense – its paid for by our taxes, our money as much as the furniture in our own houses. It is no sense “public” – unless ofcourse you are not a tax payer, which most Indians are not !
The TV in your house is yours – its paid for consciously by your money, you made the decision of when, where and which TV to buy.
If you are a taxpayer, public property is akin to a few of your friends pooling in money to buy a TV so you all can use.
If you aren’t taxpayer, public property is your neighbour’s TV – when he is not at home. So you have a free-for-all.
This reminds me what is written in the subway cars in Boston – “Do carry your belongings and not litter. Your taxes pay for cleaning the train.”
And one of the stupidest reactions to this is for the middle-class to glorify these as quirks and laugh at ourselves. And then trumpet around that our ability to laugh at ourselves is one of our virtues. In that case, our incapacity for introspection and unwillingness to examine ourselves is our biggest shame.
I loved Guwahati city – stayed there for 2 years. Its still my favorite big city. But I suggest – ban matches here for 2 more years, make people pay and make them accountable. Make them behave.
Fine the BCCI. I am beginning to hate that the BCCI is now rich and has clout – doesnt make me unpatriotic unless one is in the Cheney-Ashcroft mould. What I stress is that with great power comes great responsibility. Atleast it should. But few powerful Indian institututions show any great responsiblity. For example : the Indian Government – if you can call it an institution i.e.
Understand this ! April 9, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, humor, image.add a comment
Can it get more complicated than that !!
This picture was shot just outside my lab in Pittsburgh. ( Courtesy : Smitha ). Will something like this likely work in India ? Probably not – not because several people unlikely to be able to read this ( if someone owns a car/bike he/she should be able to read it.), but because we couldnt care less given our nature of law enforcement.
A related question – is it ethical then for public announcements ( like this one ) to be put in a way that only a section of the citizens can comprehend. An uneducated man who pays city taxes ( does such a person exist ) can argue that the government whose taxes he pays is excluding him from its activities. Nonsensical argument according to me, but it may still be made – like several other such arguments often are.
On Lagrange April 9, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in science.add a comment
I highly recommend a recent post from Deepak on European mathematicians from the 19th century. And during my random surfing found 2 interesting facts about Lagrange -
- He was one of the only 2 out of his 11 ’siblings’ to have survived infancy !!
- He believed that a mathematician has not thoroughly understood his own work till he has made it so clear that he can go out and explain it to the first person he meets on the street.
I am not a mathematician but neverthless am thinking of what of all the mathematics that I have learnt can ( or would want to ) explain to “first person I meet on the street” unless ofcourse that happens to be a fellow graduate student – the probabilty of which is so small ( unless again I am walking on campus !! ) !
Calculus would be really hard. Cordinate geometry is appealing, but to a layman ? Well, probability – forget it.
I would probably chose to explain to him/her the meaning of the phrase “on an average”. It is believed that we all have an intuitive sense of the word “average” – I hope that might aid my process and help me do a good job to explaining it to someone. Well, on an average atleast !
Other identities – I April 5, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in blogging, littlerockers.add a comment
In addition to this blog, there are two other blogs I contribute to – thebroadcaster and thelittlerocker. Here is a post about thelittlerocker.
I have to interrupt to note this – its amazing that MS Word 2002 on which I am preparing this post underlines the word “blog” in red – look where we have come, from being a spelling error to an outright phenomenon!
Anyway, thelittlerocker is a blog that ‘serves’ the Little Rock alumni – ofcourse the word ‘serves’ is not quite correct, but I will go with it for now. I (along with an occasional contribution from other alumni members) post updates on the little rock alumni. Although its hard to define what an update is and guage its newsworthiness, we make an honest effort. It started off last May ( 2005) and was meant to cater to a larger alumni community. However, over the months as logistics would have it, it has mostly been restricted to a small subset, notably the Class of 1997(my own batch). There are occasionally posts about alumni from other batches under two circumstance – (a) a contribution from Aswin ( Class of 1998 ) or news I hear from people who I personally know. It is hard to go hunting for information about people you don’t know especially when they couldn’t care less! So these complications somehow result in a high Class of 1997 focused reporting. The bottomline is that thelittlerocker is by no means my personal blog – it has a well-defined domain and hopefully an audience too!
Infact, I have lately discovered that there is indeed an audience. I am using performancing.com to track the visits – this software gives among other information – the number of visits split up in terms of geography, repeat visits, browsers used and such. This is not only a good record to have, but also a motivator – that someone afterall does read stuff you work hard to put up. I suspect though that most of the visits are from people who aren’t from Class of 1997 – this is quite obvious because most information reaches people in our batch from the yahoogroups. Therefore, its mostly people from other batches who would want to know.
This brings me to the comments from Sona Teacher ( from Little Rock ) on the littlerocker alumni blog. It was quite satisfying to read through her comments (bottom of the link). Excepts from my reply to her comments say it all –
“Its a hard job that not only takes lot of time but also involves cajoling people to give information something I find rather hard. Its discouraging sometimes when you realize that not many people find it half as worthy of attention as some of us do and so, its all the more harder.
But I keep at it and will continue to do so as long as I can make time for it because I am somehow convinced that the value of something like this will be apparent over a period of time. And besides, I see it as a form of community service – my own way to give something back to a community expecting nothing in return.”.
I guess I meant every word I wrote in reply. That hopefully answers the question I have been asked a few times – “What do you get by doing all this ?” It helps me constantly remind myself that “its not all about me!”.
( A post about thebroadcaster is next ! )
