LSE

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Account of an Undergrad - first year.

Its four in the f*** in morning!

A line I cribbed from Shaun of the dead!
Actually its five in the morning in nama bengalooru. And as always I turn to blogging to kill time, though this time in the BMath blog, a privilege extended to me by the madcaps I had as my seniors.
I was thinking about the piratebay thing, which most of the internet users round the globe visit more often than not, except probably in US of A, Uncle Sam being his usual hawkish self. Now piratebay is a torrent site, which allows us to download loads of stuff using some torrent client like azureus. Its based in Sweden, which has pretty lax copyright laws or maybe, pretty ok copyright laws. Piratebay has been aggressively targeted by some organizations, most famously by MPAA, which is the Motion Pictures Association of America. MPAA urged, nudged, and probably kicked asses of some Swedish ministers and got Piratebay raided, although it was up in about 3 days. Have a look at this.
MPAA claims that Piratebay is in violation of copyright laws, that what it does is stealing. Legally though this might not exactly be right, the reason being Piratebay is more like an information giver, its like you ask this fellow where you might get stolen TV's or where the gangbang's going on. You can't prosecute someone for this, atleast that's what Swedish law says.
Ethically and economically however this is a different issue. The MPAA argues that this downloading is resulting in money loss for artists (as wide as possible), that it is something that might lead to loss of jobs, lowering of budgets and lowering of incentives for movie work. This is not quite true. First, most people download movies they otherwise won't have watched in theater or would have bought a dvd of, however the movie turns out to be good many do get the dvd (this is not quite true in India, what with dvd prices high and students, who are the major downloaders, budgets low) but you can see the comments in piratebay, in which the one who is sharing the movie, recommends it. Why do people take so much time to share a movie? My guess is that apart from the fact that they expect other people to share, they also want to show a good movie to others, akin to the way I used to run around trying to show movies in the audi. Besides sometimes this sharing can also greatly advertise a movie, case in point being that of The Man from Earth. Most of the movies being shared are popular hollywood movies, which I believe are downloaded by 20-30 years olds, mostly for time pass, but not out of an irresistible need to watch movies, I mean if Piratebay wouldn't have been around, they would probably watch TV, get a social life, masturbate, whatever. Some might rent a movie, this thing though I am not sure about, ie I don't know if
people will rent a movie unless they know its good, has got good reviews or is recommended by a friend. Although people do download movies indiscriminately, I mean 150 guys downloaded The Hottie and the Nottie for heaven's sake!!
Sharing is inherent in most humans and piratebay is just a big center for sharing. Rousseau defined civilization to be all about building fences, he famously said man is born free yet everywhere is in chains! But I can hardly criticize civilization to defend something that is a product of civilization! However, it is natural for us to try and break fences, fences are quite good but too tight fencing is not what we are looking for!
The important thing is that this is sharing which is going on, not stealing. I mean if they stop it, why not stop people from lending their DVDs, cameras, books, etc to their friends?
PS- Australian Aborigines were a race of people who were pretty much without any fence, they roamed wherever they wanted, each clan was like a big family in fact they hardly differentiated between there tribe and family, and if someone refused to share his wife, he was regarded as a bad sport!! I guess Kamleshji would have fitted right in, could have become sarpanch of an aborigine village simply by sharing the right thing!
PS2- One wonderful review of The hottie and the nottie said this - Watching this film was like having a view from underneath a toilet....and watching in horror as each piece of cinematic feces after another emerged, falling horribly and inevitably towards you.

Why people blog?

Nowadays the blogs seem to be replacing the Fifth estate. Indian paparazzi are more using blogs to get into the limelight rather than call a press conference and make the announcements. I am totally baffled as to why people blog. I asked one great researcher why he blogs. He 'defined' blog as a personal diary which can be accessed as long as you have access to internet(though his definition of 'definition' is pretty vague and hazy). But then, if you are really interested in penning your thoughts and ideologies, then why go online, in the days of hacking, cracking and 'phishing'?

When your credit card can be accessed and hacked using a computer, why write your thoughts, which are more valuable than mere 6 sq. inch cards?

Being a statistician, my feeling is that a personal diary is very less probable to be stolen than a blog being intruded. So why blogging?

Some Photos.

Lake Michigan Surfers.




















(left)Sad and lonely. :(













Human face.

Hiking/Chicago Trip.

Today, we planned to go to Starved Rock State Park which is in Illinois(IL). We four started driving from seven in the morning as it was 3.5 hours drive from St. Louis. We reached there by 10:30, it was good light hazy weather for hiking. We had our brunch in a restaurant, it was buffet and was good, I enjoyed it. Then we left for hiking with a map, which showed 4-5 small canyons along the side of Illinois river. The river was not huge, as what I would say but it was surrounded by good mountains/hilly areas. We headed with the map and got few pictures(whose link will be posted soon(hopefully) in my album). We were lucky to get some good ones in our cameras. Then we finally walked alongside the river to the parking lot. The surprising moment came when we decided to have some good food after all that excitement in the hiking, not to mention that the hiking was really tiring as we walked for some 10 miles on those mountains and along the river. Anyways, we decided to go to Gareeb Nawaz/Usmania(in Chicago) for Biryani!!! And we left for it. We reached Usmania at 1630 hrs. got our biryanis but not before we saw the lake Michigan as we drove through the Lake Drive and near Sears Tower. Lake looked astonishing, it was beautiful and filled with surfers. As it was already 6 and given that it will take 5 hours to drive back we left Chicago(Chicago is 313 miles from St. Louis). But that was not the end of surprise, we were caught by the hail storm that was there waiting for us in the dark night, 150 miles before our destination. And we were racing @80 mph, which was both exciting and crazy. We drove past people who were mere 40 and were reluctant to speed up. Over all it was a total surprise trip which was made in few second's initiation and executed with the most excitement(if not perfection).

NY and DC trip day 1

It's long that anyone posted some topics here. :(
So I thought I'll take the initiative to write something, cause my semester practically got over today. Last week I , together with a few friends went to visit New York and Washington. We rented a car on Sunday April 20th and headed to New York at around noon. In between we stopped to some place in Connecticut to have a small break and then we continued our journey to New York. We reached New Jersey at around 4 in the evening and checked in our Hotel. After an hour's rest we headed to New York. We were at Times Square at around 7pm. Times square was full of people even though it was a Sunday evening. The place near times square rocks. We park our car in the 7th avenue and amazingly we got free parking. :)
We walked around in times square watching the most colorful American city. Then we headed towards the Rockefeller centre . We had to walk 2 blocks to get there from times square. There is a beautiful garden in front of Rockefeller center and behind there are flags of all the countries which are decorated in white lights. Then it was the time to go to the top of the rock, on the roof of Rockefeller center. We had to stand in a huge queue before we entered the building. We went thorough a minor security check before we got in. There again we had to wait in a long queue before we could step in the high speed elevator to finally reach the top of the rock (well... at least to the 63rd floor. The elevator doesn't go to the top). We walked around there for a while before we finally took the escalator to reach the top. The view from there was fantastic. I would suggest whoever gets a chance to come to New York must go there during night for the view. It is worth your money and effort :)
At around 11 in the night, we were out in the streets of New York and surprisingly we found out that even New York sleeps as most of the shops were closed, but luckily the Burger King near our car was open. Then we drove to ground zero, to see the remnants of the world trade center. They are still trying to clear the area and it looks so sad. But they are planning to build a new world trade center in the same place by 2012.
Then we headed for the battery park to get a view of the Statue of Liberty at night. But it's actually too far from there to get a good picture. So we headed back to our hotel with the plan to visit Statue of Liberty and other places in New York on the next day.

To be continued...

Universal existence of Bathroom writers and the Economics behind it:-

After visiting two continents and gathering information from the friends in almost all continents, I can assert that Zealot toilet scholars exist everywhere in the world. I will concentrate towards positive part of supposedly negative thinking. People who destroy there energy in sketching graphical description of their friends, posting mobile number of number-2 type girls and many other innovative useless things can use there intellect for the welfare of mankind. I want to stress on the reach of these bathroom scholars. It's my experience, please do not take it as a satire on those intellectual thinker. In my view, it's most recently discovered place to speak out. Around 8 months back, I have seen first slogan to boycott Beijing Olympics in the toilet of Universite Paris1 Pantheonne-Sorbonne(Tobiac Campus) just below the sketch of a nude girl.

"WE WANT FREE TIBET, BOYCOTT BEIJING OLYMPICS"

Now, Everyone is well aware of the reach of this newly discovered media. The fire which is initiated inside toilet of Paris-1 made French president bold enough to boycott starting ceremony of Olympics as he was a regular user of that toilet. A lot of Shahi clinics running their Business from the toilets. As an Economist, I will appreciate bidding for the right of pasting pamphlets in Indian toilets. It will raise a good amount to maintain ill-conditioned Indian toilets. Public toilets are most widely appreciated media to speak out your feeling, which will attract common people's attention in most effective way because while peeing people suppose to be most relax(Ref. Birbal's Theorem) in this fast paced world. It's my appeal to Indian AIDS awareness society to start their campaign from Public toilet in stead of starting it with Shilpa-Richard smooching sessions. I will emphasize on the selectivity of quality of posters. For example in our ISI toilet we can display posters having some mind-blowing, revolutionary Hypothesis.......I am want to list one of them named Safdar's Hypothesis.

Safdar's Hypothesis: There exist a simple random walk in n-manifolds and stupid B. Rajeev can not understand it.

Now, people will concentrate their mind in sketching possible path and closed formulas for simple random walk in place of designing logo of BAT-BALL tournament. So, what do you think about this mind blowing idea.............

This is one of my unpublished work as an Economist.

My experiences with Statistics

My total earning from tutoring Statistics is 100 pounds now :) The topics that I have taught are:-
1) Regression
2) Hypothesis testing
3) Non - Parametric tests

I am glad that I graduated from ISI and no matter how much I have hated Statistics (and, I still do), the course-work at ISI made me learn some basics of the topic. I have the confidence to read up on stuff and manually calculate everything for my students (and I am being paid 20 pounds an hour :D And, the number of my students is rising exponentially :D :D)!

Come to think of it, who would have thought I would actually tutor Statistics and be paid for it!

Moral:- Money is a good motivation to learn Statistics :P

fuck-wit-excellente

Here is a piece of conversation between me and a batch-mate of mine. This chap has been in UK since 1993. Lets just call him X for the time being.

X:- So, you are from India?
Me:- Yup [smile]!
X:- I like India.
Me:- Oh! Cool! Have you been there?
X:- Nope. Not yet.
[Pause]
X:- There are lots of Maharajas in India, no? Maharajas and Princes?
ME:- Not any more. That was before independence.
X:- [Pause] [Ponder] Do you have elephants in India?
Me:- Yeah. Loads.
X:- You guys use it as a taxi, right?
Me:- (!!??!?) errr... NO!
X:- [puzzled disbelief] But, I saw it in James Bond movie!
Me:- Thats a Goddamn movie mate! We have the same Taxis as you guys do.
X:- Oh [slightly disappointed]! Do you have snakes in India?
Me:- Yeah. In jungles.
X:- But, there are a lot of them in cities, no? They can come like-this-like-this [makes a slithering movement with hands] to the cities. And, they bite!!!
Me:- Dude! How often do you get to see snakes on the streets of London?
X:- Never seen 'em.
Me:- Precisely! Snakes hardly come to the city.
X:- But this is UK! And, THAT is India.
Me:- Oh yeah?
[I must say, I was getting amused by this guy's hopeless general knowledge. I had no idea that such exhibits managed to survive this world for 23 years and come to LSE as well]
[Awkward silence for a minute]
X:- Do you have loads of crocodiles in India?
Me:- Dude! Now you are pushing it.
X:- No! I want to go to India and swim in Ganges but I am scared of crocodiles.

I ran out of patience by then and told him I will see him later in class.

Another chick. She is British-Bangladeshi. She loves wearing loads of kajal so that she could look like Bipasha Basu (who, as she puts it, is a Bengal-tigress). Exhibit B here has also joined a facebook group titled Bangladeshi doesn't mean Bengali-Muslim, you dumb bitch!!! (note the extra exclamation marks). Fair enough. She is probably disappointed with other people's ignorance.

BUT,

she thinks that all Indians who have come to UK for the first time are "Fresh From Oven". And, everytime she looks at a male Indian postgrad or first year Indian undergrad (even those who were born and brought up in Malaysia/Australia/NZ/Hongkong) she gets a totally romantic feeling of them being village-boys. The other day she casually enquired whether the brands like Vogue and Nike existed in India. After being told that they pretty much do, she said, "But, in India, everyone is so poor!!! How do they manage?"

Well... yup. LSE is quite an interesting place to meet people.

Mission:- How to make ISI better?

An evil plan, I say! Here is an outline (Kindly drop-in your suggestions) :-
1) I make loads of money.
2) Mathew and Sid also make loads of money. So do others who wish to move to jobs.
3) 10 years down the line, pool in cash and start a separate institute. Same entrance procedure. Start with only undergrad.
4) Provide better salary to lecturers. And, MUCH BETTER stipends to students.
5) Offer more flexibility to students in choosing their specialization viz pure/app maths, comp sc, stat, physics.
6) Arrange for them to receive excellent tutoring from other colleges as well , if needed.
7) Work along CMI lines and have an industry sponsored comp sc and applied maths departments (which will also ensure students have places to consider once they finish undergrad)
8) Use our contacts and encourage students to take up internships and gain work-experience.
9) Again pulling strings to place students with the best of the firms here or abroad (By that time, we probably be in a decent position in some firm ourselves - maybe partners :P)
10) It will be hard to implement it for first couple of years but once people start getting placed, the rest will fall in place. The entire motive is to provide a suitable environment to both - the ones who wish to be researchers and the once who wish to move to industry. And, a very suitable one as well!
11) I believe that our batch-mates/seniors/juniors/their contacts would be willing to join the place for we will ensure an environment conducive to fruitful research :)
11) But then we put money in it! What do we get out of it? :) It will be a totally dumb-ass move not to have a way to make more cash out of our cash. I have a plan. Somewhat. But not a good idea to put it on the blog.

So yeah! Thats a sort-of vague plan. I am sure, things will change over time. We will be able to improve on it. Maybe change a few things here and there. But this is the basic skeleton. And, I am not being altruistic. Its just a way to give students a better platform AND make money for ourselves.