A mind at play

Turing's was a shadowy figure until Alan Turing The Enigma appeared. A mind at play will likely do the same for Shannon.

Shannon of course is the father of Information Theory,  his insights forming the bedrock of digital communication. As the authors put it, 'information existed before Shannon, just as inertia existed before Newton'. It was Shannon who created the conceptual foundations needed to deal with information in a precise, quantitative manner. First of all, he clarified what information is. Information is what reduces uncertainty, one bit of it exists when we are choosing from two equally likely outcomes. Then he showed that all communication is expressible in terms of bits. Next, each communication channel has an upper limit on how many bits it can carry per second (dependent on the bandwidth and the signal-to-noise ratio). Within this limit, noise can always be defeated; a message can always be sent with an arbitrarily small amount of error. And lastly, all of the above stays true irrespective of whether the message has meaning or not.

The importance of his work was immediately recognized, propelling Shannon to scientific celebrity at 32, but Shannon chose not to pursue it. Information theory quickly became a buzzword in fields ranging from psychology to economics, but it was Shannon who cautioned against blindly jumping on the bandwagon. He returned to his work and spent the rest of his days inventing.

A mechanical mouse that could solve a maze and remember the solution (A concrete demonstration of AI when all the field had was theory). A juggling robot (Shannon was an accomplished juggler, and wrote one of the first papers on mathematics of juggling). A wearable computer to time roulette wheels and a system to place bets to maximize winning (I make my money on the Stock market, not by proving theorems, Shannon once said). A chess playing computer (and a paper establishing the foundations of the field). All sorts of customized unicycles. And the ultimate machine: when switched on, a mechanical arm came out of the box and turned itself off.

Shannon's was a fascinating life, and the book does a good job of bringing it out of the shadows. At a few places it feels a bit sketchy, but that does not take from it's readbility. The authors are clearly in awe of Shannon, and after reading it, you will be too.

What I am watching update

A quick note on some good stuff I watched recently. Apart from the obvious purpose of sharing this with friends, it is also hoped that  should an unpaid troll (paid ones are just doing their job) were to ever wander on this page, it will have found one more way to spend its time constructively (and spare the rest of us). Enjoy.

Two seasons of Crown

Netflix has been a net positive addition to the quality of my life, but quite a bit of it deals with dark and/or supernatural themes, and no matter how well made, that gets tiresome after a while. Crown was a welcome break, with great performances and deeply engaging characters. Monarchy is not a subject that I would have explored on my own, so I learned a thing or two too, that I otherwise would not have.

Darkest hour

While it is hard to totally like Churchill, there is no denying his qualities either, and the movie brings them forth with force and intensity. I did not recognize at all that it was Gary Oldman in the lead role.

YZ

खदखदून हसलो असा पिक्चर खुप दिवसांनी पाहिला. 'बत्तीस' चे डायलॉग तर अप्रतिम. यात भरपूर फंडे आहेत, आणि ते काही सगळे हसन्यावारी घालवन्यासारखे आहेत अस नाही.

A stitch in time

A stitch in time, saves nine, they say. To really appreciate its meaning, one needs to have a root canal performed though.

Take good care of your teeth.

Facts and Meaning of Logicomix

Facts:

A. It is a graphic novel about the 'foundational quest' in mathematics, an endeavour to put mathematics on a secure footing in the first half of the twentieth century. The story is told via Russell's life and in Russell's voice, a central character in that story.

B. It counts noted computer scientist and author Christos Papadimitriou as a coauthour.

C. It was on my reading list for a long time.

Meaning:

I (in fact) made a number of beginnnings under this section, but found none of them satisfactory. The essence always seems to escape, much more so than for most other books. Read the book and make the meaning for yourself.

Notes from a math lecture

Public lectures have a distinguished history going at least as far back as Faraday, but I hardly have any history of attending them. Call it new year fervor that has not subsided yet (or whatever), something did prompt me out of my laziness when I came to know of a public lecture to be given by Prof. Schmid from Harvard last week. My thinking was, more or less, it's a public lecture, How hard can it be?

The topic of the lecture was 'Riemann's continuous, nowhere differentiable function'. As it happens, before Riemann it was thought that a function that is continuous everywhere but differentiable almost nowhere could not exist. Weierstrass was the first to publish such a function, though Riemann (second hand reports claim) gave an example of such a function earlier, but without giving proof. Working that out took a while. G. H. Hardy showed in 1916 that the function is not differentiable at irrational points, while Gerver and Smith showed in 1970s that it is not differentiable at rational points either, except those of the form p/q with p and q relatively prime. Prof. Schmid worked on this function himself, which is intimately related to fractals, a topic which came to prominence much later. The area is important and broad enough to have its own book.

That is the summary, and I am afraid I cannot go in more detail. The lecture was obviously intended for students who are learning related stuff and was full of details and formalism, though the key ideas (like the ones mentioned above) were clearly  brought out. I remember reading John Derbyshire's Prime obsession with great interest, and those who have read it (or are otherwise familiar with the history of Riemann hypothesis) would not fail to notice a parallel here. One minor quibble on the personal front is that I was interested in getting a view on, of the six remaining millennium problems (which include both Riemann hypothesis and P vs NP), which one we are closest to solving, but ended up squandering the opportunity to ask. 

Overall it was a good learning experience, and sitting in a hall surrounded by an overwhelmingly young crowd brought back memories of my own college days, turning it into a refreshing one as well.

Wild ride

Wild ride is the story of Uber. Now to anyone who reads news, at least parts of that story would appear familiar; the strength of Wild ride is it gives a highly readable, balanced and insightful account in a remarkably small package (just over 200 pages). It is worth mentioning that the author went beyond the usual research tools (interviews etc) while preparing for the book, working as an Uber driver himself for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and to those who are interested in startups, it would make a pleasant and instructive read.

First few days with Pixel2

This is not a systematic review of Pixel2. Many of those exist, and in any case, interest in such a thing would be low because Pixel2 is not that new anymore. Instead, what follows is a bunch of impressions, in no particular order. Note that my previous phone was the first gen Moto G. While an excellent phone when I bought it, over time it grew many warts, making me spend a lot of energy in cursing (being able to curse in three languages was a boon here). Undoubtedly my impressions are tinged by that experience.

The first thing I noticed after opening the box is, it's light. Cross that, it is surprisingly light.

It charges fast, but also seems to discharge fast, especially when data network is in use.

The backside gets a bit warm with extensive use.

This was the first time I really used a voice interface, and I continue to be astounded by the accuracy of Google assistant. I find it quite uncanny too, e.g. the first time I asked it to play a song, it came up with ye jo des hai tera from Swades.

Much has been said about its camera, so I'll just mention that I have replaced an iPhone owner as the chief photographer at office birthdays.

I don't have a VR headset yet, but did use it once on a relative's Pixel2. The roller-coaster demo gave me a very real dizziness.

I had pretty much stopped trying new apps, and the ones I used formed a close-to-immutable set. Now I am (much more) likely to be found with my head buried in the phone. 

I restarted using Twitter, and (as evidenced by this post) am more likely to blog. I check Facebook more often, and the same applies (probably to a larger degree) to Quora, Stackoverflow, HN, LinkedIn, Medium, TechCrunch and more.  Which brings me to the next point.

Information overload was already a problem, and it grows worse with a better phone. Same goes for the distraction angle. Thankfully relief (so to speak) is not far away; the play store has a number of Meditation apps too :-) So Headspace joins my trusty Insight timer  (but I am yet to try it, being busy writing this post).

The EMI is pretty high (had to say it)! :-p