De Dana Dan

Thou shalt not watch De Dana Dan (at any cost), but if you are so venturous, you can read my review here (written in public interest).

Dizzying Rides

You might already be familiar with Edge. If not, it's an online forum where leading intellectuals (including Richard Dawkins and Lee Smolin) discuss stuff that interests them. Makes for good reading, but one of the more interesting features of the forum is their Question Center. Each year, a question is formulated, and replies from leaders in respective fields are collected. To give a specific example, the 2005 question was, 'What you beleive but cannot prove?', and for 2006 it was 'What is your Dangerous idea?'. The responses for both these years have been published in book form, and I recently got a chance to read both of them.

Dizzying Ride! That's the only way I can put it. You tend to like some responses, dislike others, agree with some (a few), but learn from almost all of them. They represent the cutting edge of research in wide array of scientific fields, and unlike the popular science books (which I tend to read from time to time), are not always easy to digest. More often than once I found myself thinking, "Ohh, I did not even know that such a problem existed!". It's a wonderful way to get a broad view of the very latest thinking in a wide range of scientific fields. Don't miss it! I tend to prefer the Dead Tree version, but they are available online too, just go here.

Enjoy!

Pairs

Position - Momentum (Heisenberg)
Time - Energy (?)
Truth - Clarity (Bohr)
Bwa ha ha.

Fun Time

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are driving through the high country in Scotland. Atop a hill, they see a black sheep. The engineer says: "All sheep are black!" The physicist says: "No, no, some sheep are black." The mathematician: "At least one sheep is black on at least one side."

I first read this joke in Jayant Naralikar's influential Aakashashi Jadale Nate. In the nine years that followed, I came to appreciate a few more math-jokes (but only a few). But today yours truly got lucky. Stumbled upon a treasure trove. Mathoverflow has a thread running on the same, and it's overflowing with some seriously good stuff! Do not miss! Of course I did not understand everything, but it's worth it. Here are some of my favorites, picked from the thread, and the links linked (?) from there.

A physicist, an engineer, and a statistician were out game hunting. The engineer spied a bear in the distance, so they got a little closer. "Let me take the first shot!" said the engineer, who missed the bear by three metres to the left. "You're incompetent! Let me try" insisted the physicist, who then proceeded to miss by three metres to the right. "Ooh, we got him!!" said the statistician.

A mathematician organizes a raffle in which the prize is an infinite amount of money paid over an infinite amount of time. Of course, with the promise of such a prize, his tickets sell like hot cake.When the winning ticket is drawn, and the jubilant winner comes to claim his prize, the mathematician explains the mode of payment: "1 dollar now, 1/2 dollar next week, 1/3 dollar the week after that..."

OK, time for a quick quiz..

Q: What is a topologist?
A: Someone who cannot distinguish between a doughnut and a coffee cup.

Q: Why didn’t Newton discover Group Theory?
A: Because he wasn’t Abel.

Q: What’s a polar bear?
A: A rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: Fermat: It did not fit on the margin on this side.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?
A: To get to the same side.

OK, enough fun. Time for some serious math now.

Theorem. 3 = 4.
Proof. Suppose
a + b = c .
This can also be written as:
4a − 3a + 4b − 3b = 4c − 3c .
After reorganizing:
4a + 4b − 4c = 3a + 3b − 3c .
Take the constants out of the brackets:
4(a + b − c) = 3(a + b − c) .
Remove the same term left and right:
4 = 3. (Mwuhahaha)

And before leaving, I give you this tongue in cheek, but still telling quote.

An engineer thinks that his equations are an approximation to reality. A physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his equations. A mathematician doesn’t care.

Enjoy!


P.S. One more that I just could not resist.
Q: Why do mathematicians often confuse Christmas and Halloween?
A: Because Oct 31 = Dec 25.

Reasoning with the Unreasonable

The unreasonable I am referring to here is the stuff of the mind. Thoughts. We spend almost every waking moment thinking. And we pride ourself on our way to reason, our logic; but surely there are moments when the unreasonable reigns. On one side you can see the, well, unreasonableness (if there is such a word) of your own thoughts. If only that would make it go away. But No. It'll sit there, eating your cycles, consuming your energy. Personal quirk, or some remnant primal urge? Or something else? I am not sure. Fact is, it's there to pop its ugly head occassionally, and we have to learn to deal with it.

Being a robot ain't entirely devoid of benefits, it seems.

The frank politician

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides facts that call theory in question.

-From Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama has become a symbol of hope for millions worldwide, and that includes not just Americans. His Audacity of Hope was a wonderful read. The things that stand out most is his frankness to say things as he sees them without political pamper, his willingness to say that the problems before him may not have simple solutions and also to consider the alternate point of view. Coming from a politician, you might expect it to be dry read, but it's not. The book is enlivened by narratives of the author's encounters with the Aam Aadmi. And I think the things he talks about apply (to some extent, at any rate) to our country too. I think you should not miss it.

2012

My review @ the movie blog.

A forward

Engineer's love story

Mai BE me tha
Wo BE me thi
Mai BE me tha
Wo ME me thi
Mai BE me tha
Wo PhD kar rahi thi
Aaj uski shaadi hai
Mera backlog ka paper hai..


Received this SMS forward a few moments back. And let's face it, it's not very funny. But still, I immediately forwarded it to my old engg. gang and a few other friends. Why? Because it filled my mind with those golden memories (which for the record contain many love stories, in all of which I play the innocent bystander :p). Nightouts, coffee at 1:30AM.. I keep takling about it all the time, and still don't seem to get enough. Drizzling rains and an unusual quiet in the room may have played a part today!

Enjoy the Rains!

Few simple rules

To live by. As you might have guessed, I am in preaching mode today.
So here they are.. (brackets tell where they are lifted from)

Be original! (Parker [Not Peter, Pen])

Know Stuff! (Abstruse Goose)

Travel Light! (My own brain)

Have Fun! (Robert Love, LKD 2nd ed. From the Preface)


Additions (preferably expressed in two words) are welcome!

The Double Helix

I had wanted to read the The Double Helix since forever. I knew the DNA story, and in some detail too, but learning it from the horse's mouth is always a different deal. And it did not disappoint. It's the chronicle of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953 (which in turn led to a Nobel prize in 1962), by Watson himself. The things that stand out immediately are his honesty and his bluntness. Without mingling words, he tells the reader where he went wrong, and where others went wrong, before eventually discovering the right answer. There are false starts, professional jealousy and so on; but there also is a sense of fair play, and a thought given to the regular life. Once started, you can not put it down. Don't miss it!