Hello, Dr. Kavita Vadali!

September 19th, 2006 admin

August 2001 seems so recent. That was when Kavita came to the US to start working towards her PhD. After five years working on cell signaling pathways using the fruitfly as the model, Kavita successfully defended her work and was awarded a PhD in Biology by her advisors yesterday, Spetember 18th 2006. Though the convocation is in December and the magnitude of the achievement may be imparted a more visual facet then, I can appreciate what this day means to her and all the rest of us close to her.

Living in a tiny square patch of a town, in the middle of thousands of square miles of featureless flatlands, encouragingly named “Normal”, was expected to be hard for this single woman. She took to it like a duck to water. Having been on the phone with her almost every one of the days in these 5 years, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that we were born with the cellphone on our ears, instead of the proverbial golden spoon in our mouths. I saw her develop lasting friendships. I saw her live an independent and brave life. I saw her work hard and cheerfully. I saw her build her life in her tiny, but beautiful apartment in Cardinal Court. Her friends, her teachers, her attitude and her spirit are all worthy of our thanks. She has done us all proud. She has given us hope and promise. Dedicated work, making the best of the opportunities you get, will get us rewards. Her mother, my mother-in-law, is to be especially congratulated. Her words, which usually carry a ring of innocence, humility and simplicity are in fact words of great wisdom. Her role in letting Kavita be herself, more than a direct hand in guiding her educational growth, is one important reason for Kavita’s achievement.

My role has been one of an honest and eager listener. Although I find very few understandable English words in her presentations or reports on her subject, I always tried to atleast keep myself aware of the basics of her field. Other than playing the joker to relieve both our stresses at the end of the day, my role has also been to positively appreciate the praise-worthy in her efforts, and critique the fallacies. I have always respected her work, her efficiency at it in her fruit-fly infested lab, her action-oriented approach towards a plan and the celerity with which she picked up something new. I have been always motivated by the positives in her. And this is a moment to reflect on these 5 years and to look towards the future as she puts the knowledge she has earned to good use. Congratulations, Dr. Vadali. You deserve it.

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5 years have passed by …

September 11th, 2006 admin

September 11th 2001. I remember someone stopping by our office room and breaking the news and then us seeing the footage on a television screen in one of the hallways inside IBM’s building 62 in RTP that morning. Everyone was out of their offices, grouped around the several hanging televisions throughout the building. I distinctly remember someone instinctively say, “World War III is about to begin…” But more noticeable was the silence. What was there to say? Disbelief was so overpowering that normalcy could only be a pretense. Even if in the coming weeks and months, we got our heads around the what, the how and the why, that would not take away the disbelief from the fact that it happened, the thought that such things are even possible. The lives lost can not be brought back. The innocence lost can probably not be restored.

The World Trade Center towers, since my childhood, had been to me the image of the American skyscraper and American achievement. I considered them the most gorgeous of modern buildings in the world. They were symbols of simplicity, elegance, function and efficiency. Their grandeur lay in their modesty, their attractiveness in lack of ornateness. The New York and its skyline that I saw in summer of 2000, while interning at Symbol Technologies in Long Island, was defined by these towers. New York, indeed our lives, had changed forever that day.

I saw the site of the towers again in 2004 when I visited with my parents. It was a large barricaded crater-like pit. It was a sad day with a quiet sense of loss. The current plans are to build another office complex at the site. It will be called Freedom Tower. I always wished the exact same towers be rebuilt, with the exact same plans for, at least, the exteriors. Maybe people are averse to that idea since it might seem to belittle the immensity of the event. Maybe the thought is that by rebuilding the same towers the terrible events would be forgotten and we would be pretending that everything is back to normal. Maybe the reason for not rebuilding the towers is that the suffering of the innocent people who died that day would then continue to haunt forever. Maybe economics plays a cold hand and says the office space would not sell. But I feel, what better way to rebound and rebuild, than in the literal sense. A symbol of and for the indefatigable people around the world would be the twin towers rising back up from the pit to reach for the skies like they were always meant to. They would recreate the New York that defies defeat. The plain simplicity and austere efficiency of the Twin Towers would serve as the best reminder and monument there could be for what happened five years ago.

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The Monk who was not much of a storyteller

September 10th, 2006 admin

The much acclaimed book, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin S. Sharma, came to my attention when my wife’s cousin and my Uncle, both, recommended it. I probably raised my hopes too much because upon reading half the book, I recognized a sense of disappointment with myself. I had expected this book to be mesmerizing tale, a story of a monk revealing a hard-earned but deceptively simple viewpoint on how to live. With so many books that try to approach this subject, I had not heard much about the others. I was, therefore, expecting this book to be truly original.I was disappointed by several aspects of the book. Firstly, it is not a story. The lessons are not interpreted by the experiences of the characters as they face life, but rather, the lessons are handed down to the reader on a platter, more like any other self-help book. The book starts off as a story, but within a few quick pages settles into a conversation between a teacher and a student. A few pages further and the conversation shrinks to mainly a monologue by the teacher, with the student unfailingly accepting all the lessons, and obediently egging the teacher to go on. If this was how the book was to be, I do not see the pretense of attempting a story. It would have been to the benefit of the reader if the book were written in the form of a sermon, like most self-help books are.

Second reason for my feeling let down was the writing style. I read on the back cover that Robin Sharma is an electrifying speaker. I listened to some of his speeches on his website and I agree that he speaks very well. He is not, however, and electrifying author. The book, a conversation as it is, comes across as artificial. Two people speaking like a perfect teacher and a perfect student. Speech gliding between realistic wisecracks and unbelievably long-winded paragraphs of complex, flowery constructions and quotations quoted and embraced with unerring finality, push the characters, hurriedly created as they are, further away from a reader. The writing, on top of being unbelievable as speech, is itself quite weak. The book gives us a sense of being written hurriedly to meet a deadline. The style is clearly that of a PowerPoint presentation with bulleted highlights that form the skeleton of the book. Exploration of each of these bulleted and sub-bulleted lists adds the bulk. The exploration, however, is quite shallow and one-dimensional. What I mean by shallow is that the meaning of a bulleted item is explored in an obvious, rather redundant and repetitive way. It often reduces to “Do X. Doing X will improve your life in the following ways…” What I mean by one-dimensional is that the various bullets and sub-bullets that make up the chapters and sections of the chapters, are left disjoint. The only attempt to tie them together is of the type, “Do X and Y and Z all together.” The book has been written not for the really interested, but rather for those accustomed to an executive-summary style of presentations. Quick and to the point. It is, in some sense, a medicine the patient wants rather than the one the patient needs.

Another reason I was a little taken aback at least at the beginning of the book, was that the author relies on a stereotyped image of sages and monasteries in India that matches the western audience’s existing ideas on the topic. So the convenience of unreachable, eternally blissful, centenarian sages living in huts made of flowers in the lap of an unexplored valley in the heavenly Himalayas makes the lessons so much more authentic? I think it takes away from a lesson it’s believability. It dilutes an otherwise perfect thought.

In attempting to infuse authenticity to the teachings by letting these perfect sages be the originators of the thoughts presented in the book, the author’s lack of imagination reflects poorly on these actualized beings. The author comes up with a supposedly symbolic story of a Sumo wrestler and his adventures in a garden. The imagery is so wild and the associations between the symbols and the teachings so hard to understand, let alone remember, that the only reason I can think of for such imagery is to allow memorization by incredulity. The story is so feebly constructed that the audacity of actually publishing it and going with it as the theme, makes it stand out. Think of it like that irritating TV ad which is so irritating that you cannot forget it. On top of this, the author seems to have plagiarized some stories. One is Oscar Wilde’s “The Selfish Giant”, which is related as an ancient Indian tale towards the end of chapter 9. The others – like the protagonist pouring tea into a cup until the cup overflows on to the saucer, on to the table, and eventually, and unnecessarily, on to the Persian rug or the one where a child starts building a table for his parents so they can sit separately during dinner time just like his grandmother is being asked to today – I have read these stories before. Maybe they are old enough to be used as your own, without any copyright issues. But still, the lack of imagination disappointed me.

Although I have been pointing out the weaknesses of the book so far, there are some strengths. The most important strength of course is that the main ideas presented are, all said and done, good. The ideas come from various sources and different times. The book serves therefore as a collection of some sensible thoughts. The reader has to be careful to fish for these great thoughts hidden under the unimaginative, artificial, hurried, bulleted writing style and ponder upon those. Another positive I recall was seeing suggestions for other books the reader may read. The suggested readings included – “The Stories of My Experiments with Truth” by M. K. Gandhi, “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse and writings of Ben Franklin, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. I have read “Siddhartha” and think it was a thought provoking read.

I must add that I did complete reading the book and my current opinion about the book is more forgiving than the one I had after my first session with the book. Partly, the reason was I adjusted to the tone and style of the book when I picked it up again and overcame my self-imposed expectations from the book. Partly the reason was that the main ideas in the book are good. It was the presentation of the ideas that was the issue I still had at the end of the read.

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What I believe

September 4th, 2006 admin

I believe in my religion, not in giving it a name,
I believe in mistakes, and lessons, but not in placing blame.
I believe in doubt and reason, only where that may apply
I believe destiny may overcome reason and not be tamed by “Why?”
I believe also in the destiny one builds, cause preceding effect,
Making the best with what you have, and the most of what you get.
I believe in taking life as seriously, as life does take you,
Working with it as best you can, but expecting a joke or two.
I belive in the magic, powerful, that small things and acts can make,
A few good words, an honest ear, a smile, a forgiven mistake
creating happiness from nothing, dissolving sorrow, fear and tact
This I believe is real magic and better than the best Vanishing Act.
I believe in an honest attempt at excellence in every deed,
Not thinking of the tree to be, just enjoying planting the seed.
I believe in teamwork and community, in compassion and moderation,
I believe also in the individual and the infinite in one.

(Anil Krishna, September 4th, 2006)

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I don’t know. I don’t know. Now I know. Now I know!

September 3rd, 2006 admin

Question

My friend Srikanth, aka Coffee, sent this question to the egroups after hearing the one Anant had asked me.

A reporter meets two famous mathematicians P1 and P2 in a train and tells them that he is going to whisper the sum of two 2-digit numbers into P1’s ear and their product into P2’s, and then he wants them to guess what those two 2-digit numbers were. After he has whispered the sum and the product to P1 and P2 respectively, the conversation goes as follows:
P1: I don’t know.
P2: I don’t know either.
P1: Now I know.
P2: Now I know too.

What are the two numbers?

Solution

I ended up writing a program for this one too, although if there are paper-pencil or in-the-head kinds of solutions, I’d be happy to hear about those.

Lets take the statements one by one, and see how they reveal more and more detail. Notice that here P1 is the person with the SUM and P2 is the persone with the PRODUCT (other way round compared to the one Anant asked me). Also notice that since the range includes only 2-digit numbers, denoting the two numbers as X and Y, both X and Y lie between 10 and 99.

P1 says: I don’t know.
Deduction: Not very surprising. Unless the sums were 20 , 21, 198 or 197, there are multiple ways to add two numbers to get a SUM in the range 20 to 198.

P2 says: I don’t know either.
Deduction: X and Y are not primes, because if they were, then the product could have given away the factors. In fact, to make it more general, the product P = X*Y is such that there is more than one way to factorize it into valid factors (each factor lying between 10 and 99).

P1 says: Now I know.
Deduction: P1 has a sum S = X+Y such that of all the ways to add up two legal numbers (between 10 and 99) to get S, there is exactly one pair (which P1 could therefore identify), for which the product has more than one valid factorization. If it were any other way of adding up two numbers to add to S, then P2 would have immediately identified the unique factorization.

P2 says: Now I know too.
Deduction: P2 has a product PP = X*Y such that of all the valid (numbers between 10 and 99) ways to factorize it, there is only one pair that adds up to a sum that P1 could have identified. That is, only one factorization of P is such that if the factors were added, that sum could have been reached by only one pair of valid numbers, for the product of which multiple valid factorizations exist.

C Program to solve the same problem (specific to this range, but could be generalized and optimized to save time and space)

    #include <stdlib.h>
    #include <stdio.h>

    main(int argc, char** argv)
    {
      unsigned int i,j,k;

      unsigned int histProducts[10000];
      unsigned int X[10000];
      unsigned int Y[10000];
      unsigned int Z[10000];

      for(i=1;i<10000;i++){
        histProducts[i]=0;
        X[i]=0;
        Y[i]=0;
        Z[i]=0;
      }
      for(i=10;i<100;i++){
        for(j=10;j<100;j++){
          if(i<=j){
            k=i*j;
            histProducts[k]++;
            if(histProducts[k]==1) X[k]=i;
            else if (histProducts[k]==2) Y[k]=i;
            else if (histProducts[k]==3) Z[k]=i;
            //else printf("%d has more than 3 ways of factorizing", k);
          }
        }
      }

      unsigned int histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[200];
      unsigned int A[200];
      unsigned int B[200];
      for(i=1;i<200;i++){
        histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[i]=0;
        A[i]=0;
        B[i]=0;
      }
      for(i=20;i<197;i++){
        for(j=10;j<=(i>>1);j++){
          if(j>=10 && j<=99 && (i-j)>=10 && (i-j)<=99){
            if(histProducts[j*(i-j)]>1){
              histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[i]++;
              A[i]=j;
              B[i]=i-j;
            }
          }
        }
      }

      unsigned int foundValidProds;
      for(i=1;i<200;i++){
        if(histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[i]==1){
          foundValidProds=0;
          k=A[i]*B[i];
          printf("%d,%d SUM=%d PRODUCT=%d\n",A[i],B[i],A[i]+B[i],k);
          printf("For this PRODUCT %d, the following factorizations exist",k);
          if(histProducts[k]==2){
            printf(" %d*%d,",X[k], k/X[k]);
            printf(" %d*%d\n",Y[k], k/Y[k]);
            if(histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[X[k]+k/X[k]]==1) foundValidProds++;
            if(histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[Y[k]+k/Y[k]]==1) foundValidProds++;
            if(foundValidProds==1)
              printf("Of these factorizations only 1 could have been identified by the SUM guy--VALID\n\n");
            else if (foundValidProds>1)
              printf("Of these factorizations >1 could have been identified by the SUM guy\n\n");
            else
              printf("Something is wrong with this factorizations\n\n");
          }
          else if(histProducts[k]==3){
            printf(" %d*%d,",X[k], k/X[k]);
            printf(" %d*%d,",Y[k], k/Y[k]);
            printf(" %d*%d\n",Z[k], k/Z[k]);
            if(histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[X[k]+k/X[k]]==1) foundValidProds++;
            if(histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[Y[k]+k/Y[k]]==1) foundValidProds++;
            if(histNonUniqueProdsOfComponents[Z[k]+k/Z[k]]==1) foundValidProds++;
            if(foundValidProds==1)
              printf("Of these factorizations only one could have been identified by the SUM guy--VALID\n\n");
            else if (foundValidProds>1)
              printf("And of these factorizations >1 could have been identified by the SUM guy\n\n");
            else
             printf("Something is wrong with this factorizations\n\n");
          }
          else if(histProducts[k]>3){
            printf(" %d*%d,",X[k], k/X[k]);
            printf(" %d*%d,",Y[k], k/Y[k]);
            printf(" %d*%d,",Z[k], k/Z[k]);
            printf(" OTHERS EXIST TOO\n\n");
          }
        }
      }

    }

Posted in Tidbits | 1 Comment »

A beautiful movie – The Mortorcycle Diaries

September 2nd, 2006 admin

The Motorcycle Diaries is a movie that I rank right beside Amelie as one of the better movies I have seen. The haunting music of the track “De Usuahia A La Quiaca” has the edge-of-the-world feel to it that the whole movie carries. The movie is based on a real journey and draws form the written record of the travels. The surreal beauty of South America is revealed at every turn the two young travelers make during their 10,000 km journey. The journey, both physical and philosophical, has the freshness, the honesty and the unpredictability that would make you beileve that you were journeying with the two young men – Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado. Ernesto, I learnt, went on to become a part of the Cuban Revolution, and a communist leader. This movie gives us glimpses of the man he was going to become, and takes us through the journey that had a big impact on his philosophy. It is a story of companionship, bravery, compassion and self-realization. Alberto, his companion is an adventure-loving, happy-go-lucky, clever-talking guy who amidst his carefree ways sees Ernesto morphing into the leader he was going to become. I highly recommend it.

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