Thinking in Pictures

Hi,

An experiment. I realized over the past couple of years that I am very good at abstraction and pattern finding. I am able to come up with telling analogies quickly, relating seemingly disparate things by abstracting them to a reasonable level and coming up with similarities. This started me off thinking on thinking. I wondered how this was possible. How it was possible to break away from the logical, step-by-step process of vertical thinking. It didn’t get me anywhere . But an interesting offshoot of this was another realization - I think in words. I speak inside my head as I think, and this is how I think. I started off wondering if this is how everybody thinks. A secondary observation seemed to have much bigger ramifications. That I speak in my mind at the same speed that I speak physically. Does this mean that I’m restricting the speed my of thinking to that of my speech? This is similar to a CPU having to wait for keyboard input. A CPU with 3000000000 instruction steps per second waiting for one or two characters per second! (an analogy!)

Pictures need no time to form (at least none that I can perceive). So I started thinking (in words) of pictures. I’ve started thinking in pictures also. But its not reflexive yet. Will it become so over time? That’s the experiment. For now, a split second after I think of a word, I think of the picture. Its faster than conscious effort, but not reflexive. Sometimes both at the same time. An obvious difficulty I found is the pictorial equivalent of the vocabulary. The instances when I take time are those when I try to think of a complex thought, or a picture for a sentence. Will this improve over time, just as our vocabulary improves? Thinking technically with pictures? For example, how do I think of an inode? A register that’s not working? Can I think with pictures I’ve seen only, or can i “synthesize” pictures?

I googled for this today, and surprisingly found MANY results. Seems autistic people and those with some special mental facilities do this.. Interesting. I’ll update with success or failure in a while.

karthrags

 

Humility - The Ultimate Arrogance?

Hi,

Long time no write. I’ve joined IIT Madras and started working. Was quite busy. Hence the hiatus.. But the thing I’m writing about now is (hopefully) worth the long gap. Fertility and fecundity after fallow? Interesting alliteration. Hmm…

I’m having a brilliant time here at IIT. But another post on it, another time. This post is about something else. I’ve written before that I like to argue. I’ve developed a new passion/skill - developing fallacious arguments. Its quite tough. Its not about sounding dumb. You need to your dumbness to be clever. It entails intelligently thinking out a structured argument, and intentionally twisting the structure in such a way that the twist is not obvious to the other person. I’m really enjoying watching the other person grapple with a fallacious reasoning, knowing that its wrong, but not being able to put the finger on it. This post is quasi-fallacious. It is serious stuff.

I also like to puzzle about profound questions on things. Some examples -

1. Does coffee taste the same to two different people? How to verify it? I can describe the taste to you and you can check, but is language sufficient to describe the experience of drinking good (even bad) coffee?

2. Is close friendship transitive? I am a close friend with a person, and that person is a close friend of another. Is it possible for me NOT to be a close friend of that third person? My rationale behind the question - you must have noted the emphasis on close. Its obvious that acquaintanceship is not necessarily transitive. Two people become close friends when they share interests and agree, or at least agree to disagree on most points. So when there’s this great overlap between A and B, and A and C, will there not be an overlap between A and C?

I have here a similar question. Is humility the ultimate form of arrogance? I’ll also throw in some fallacious reasoning here and there, to come up with some nice points. For the first time, I’m writing a post as the starting point of a discussion. I do not want this to be a monologue. I’d LOVE to hear many points of view. I’ll try to help you by being a bit provocative .

What is humility? I am talking not about the general one, but a very particular form, where humility manifests itself as self-effaciveness in face of praise (is self-effaciveness a valid morph of the word self-effacing? still, sounds good ). Typical scenario -

A: “Hey, you did a great job! Wonder how you accomplished it..”

B: “Oh, it was nothing!”

Is B humble here? Possibly. What are the possible reasons for B’s behaviour in down-playing praise at him?

– it really was nothing for him, and he was simply being truthful.

– it was a tough job, but he was macho. He didn’t want to reveal the it sweated him out

– he wants to say he’s such a big guy that this job is trivial. But he cannot state that explicitly. Hence this.

– he is addicted to praise, and wants to be lauded for being humble, in addition to being a genius.

and so on..

The first I would say is benign, though a bit dumb, because the listener will more often than not interpret it as one of the other three, or worse.

The second is bravado - putting up a brave face while shaky inside.

The third and fourth are what really interests me. Make no mistake - there are many people like this. Its fun to inspect the motives and driving forces of them..

Third category guys are show-offs. Fourth are megalomaniacs. People who employ these tricks are no mean guys. They are really insightful and perceptive, and play around with others’ minds and their impressions of him, and subtly make suggestive remarks like these. I admire the means, though not the ends.

Uptil this point is my progress. From here starts the grey area. From here on, I only have questions, and at best, vague, unverified guesses.

1. I’ve not listed all motivations behind this kind of humility. Are there more?

2. When a person has done a good job, and another recognizes it, where is the need for him to down-play it? I for one am proud. And proud to say that I am proud. And proud to say I am proud to say that I am proud. And proud to … (recursion yet again. I notice that I’ve become good at identifying and creating recursion. This was another question I used to ponder upon. Its fine to see a recursive program and understand it, but is it really possible to anybody to create one? Is it a skill or a gift? Another question - do all those who read computer science become good at recursion? Because that’s what happened to me. CS came, and recursion came right behind. There. Two irrelevant, but relevant questions) I own my creations and my efforts, and assert the fact. I do not down-play hard work. I feel happy when my “property” is admired at - be it my code, my effort for something, my performance at something or anything else involving my things. But I don’t disfigure these and mutilate them by false self-effaciveness..

All these were there for a long time, but got refined in a way when I discovered Ayn Rand.. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are good books. They also served to ratify my opinions and thoughts on this..

So when there are so many reasons to feel proud, why be humble? And note that I refer to the “clean” version of pride. I don’t have much hopes of many understanding what the “clean” version, and I can in no way explain..

3. Is there at all any instance where this kind of humility that is not aimed at personal image gain? I know that a) this is very cynical, and b) I am contradicting myself, having just talked about the type for whom it was nothing in the first place. Still, I ask. Are not all forms of this denial secretly aimed at personal image gain? Are there some people for whom the job was difficult, but they do not acknowledge it, and NOT because they want to gain image?? Sounds a bit unbelievable! And surely is difficult to put into words. If such people exist, then why do they deny earned credit in the first place?

Questions, questions, questions. Any thoughts? It would be great if you can throw in your point of view. Tell me what you think!

-

thanks,

karthrags

 

Periya Kadambur

Another post so soon! Technically on the same day, in fact!!

Today I went to Periya Kadambur, my ancestral village. Its not the same as Kalkadambur, located near Sathyamangalam in Erode district. This one is around 3 km behind the Thirutthani temple hill. The drive to the place was fine. The last few km were exotic! Lush, bright green fields and pinkish red soil and grey rocky outcrops and blue sky - fresh colours splashed everywhere! This is the first time I’m visiting the place, and was fascinated by the environs . Cultivated fields are green, but I haven’t seen them this green! We reached the temple, which is a dilapidated and decrepit 100-year old one, almost on the road. The presiding deity is Karunakara Perumal, who’s with Sridevi and Bhoodevi. Heard that the temple was founded in 1914. The village itself was quite small. Not sure if more than 50 families reside there.

We had planned for a thirumanjanam, which went very well. Then had the (very tasty) prasadam. I also saw the house where my great grandfather (no kidding) lived!! I was struck by the state of affairs over there. All the houses and the temple are in a real bad shape. Most of them save a handful are mud affairs with shingled roofs. The temple got an electricity connection only recently :O . Interestingly/sadly/hearteningly enough, the priest there is an iyer. Interestingly, because this is the first time I’m seeing such a thing; sadly, because there’s nobody else to take care of it (seems the temple was locked for many years before this person came into the picture); hearteningly, because there’s no (dumb) intra-caste racism going on between iyers and iyengars, on part of both the priest who performs pooja daily, and the owners of the temple. The priest is paid 400 Rs a month for driving 10 km daily and taking care of the temple and the gods. Woeful state of affairs. That place, as in the case of many small village temples, is in desperate need of help. I was reminded of some small-village divyadesam temples I visited that had the same problems.

Despite being run down, the temple had a charm to it, and the priest also did a great job . Very satisfying trip in all.. In case anybody is interested in visiting the temple, I’ll be glad to help you out in finding the place etc.

karthrags

 

4th July

Today, after three long years, I met my first semester Physics teacher. Not that big an event seen out of context, but she was one of the precious few teachers in my college who was competent, who taught well, and more importantly, as a consequence of the first two reasons, whom I respected . During the dark period of despair that my first year was, she was the only sign of intelligent life on my radar..

(not surprisingly) She left my college. Was trying to get her contact for more than two years, and got it at last. Ironically from a senior who was in the US for the last two years!! Before today, I last saw her in 2005, when I went to her house to see her newborn kid. In fact, it put things into perspective. That kid’s going to pre KG now. Looking at the things in my life, the last three years seem really long and eventful, and very unlike just three years. So many eventful events, mishaps, losses, fights, patch-ups, and the kid’s managed to age just 3 years in all that time!!

Anyways, my teacher’s doing her PhD at Anna University currently, and I met her there. We had a looonng chat. Both of us were delighted to see the other . We had a very long and satisfying catch-up session. Also a small cribbing session about our colleges .

We talked the entire morning away! Meeting her made my day (what was left of it, anyways!).

It also started me off to recollecting my maths teacher. She’s almost the only other person in my college who comes under the same category as my physics teacher. She handled some complex analyis, probability and queuing theory and discrete maths. Despite being under Anna university, she taught to teach (and not to complete the syllabus) and I learnt to learn (and not just to pass). Her enthusiasm was really infectious, and she held my fullest attention in class, which was (and still is) no mean feat! We’ve had a lot of interesting arguments that stretched well beyond the hour, spilling over into the next hour, broken by the irritated teacher(?) for the next hour, and to be resumed during lunch or tea break.. She was a HUGE contributing factor in me falling in love with maths. Even now, I am most attracted to Discrete Maths and Probability, mainly due to the fascinating open questions both of us bombarded the other with.. Here’s a sampler -

In 4th semester, I was not acquainted with the concept of mathematical modeling and stuff. So the whole idea of a random variate was intriguing and frankly, beyond my grasp and unacceptable at first. My question was, “what’s the purpose of finding the expected value of X? The core is how P(X=x) is distributed. So we need to study the probability values (the RHS). We are just going to plug in some value of x in LHS. What’s the point of analysing what we are goig to give as input?” hard to see my point? Takes some time..

Nobody else in the whole college was able to provide such stimulation and kindle interest. Sadly, she is also  out of touch now, save a few mails every year. Heard she’s out of India.. All day today I was revisiting the memorable things that happened in her classes. I especially remember her coming for a special class the day after her brother expired, AND taking class for 2 hours! We were stunned when she told the news. Such dedication.. Sad that she too left college (or maybe happy that she escaped!).

And the previous post was a recap-of-june + looking-ahead-into-july, which many people seemed to miss . Anything worth mentioning, I’d've done it in a separate post..

I also managed to find the bug in my CUDA program that has been er.. bugging me for 3 days. Aaahhhh . The pains and pleasures of debugging. And in parallel programming, both are magnified! CUDA is both the architecture as well as the API that enables parallel processing by Nvidia’s higher end range of cards (GeForce 8 upwards, Quadro fx 3700 upwards and Tesla).  Currently, we’re messing around with one each of GeForce 8800GT, Quadro FX 3700, Tesla C870, and 12 GeForce 9800 GX2s (which were released only a few months back!!) ALL free of cost, courtesy Nvidia, of course .. I’m learning CUDA now. Managed to write a few basic programs on it as of now. Slowly getting the hang of the new paradigm..

Some Links

- CUDA - Wikipedia Article

- Nvidia’s CUDA Home

karthrags

And no, the post, despite being titled 4th July, had NOTHING to do with the US, or Independence or anything. I was wondering what to label this smorgas-post, and “4th July” seemed interestingly misleading .

 

June/July

Hi,

June about to end. June, and to a certain extent May, has been a time of travel, major decisions, adventure, success, interviews, arguments, evaluation of options. But by far, it has been the time of screw-ups . I think the highlight of the last two months was how I consistently and successively messed interview after interview, and still managed to get admit after admit!! Wondering if I’m leading a charmed life . I’ll elaborate on this next post. This one will be a brief recap of June and what I’m expecting of July.

The major decision, the decision of the month, was me deciding that I’m joining IIT Madras. It was not a coincidental or hasty or impulsive decision. I’d called up and turned down IIT Delhi and Kanpur. It was between IISc and IIT Madras. Due to plenty of reasons, I felt IIT Madras will best serve my purposes, and went ahead with it. I wonder - there’s a very small difference between going ahead with what I want and being bravely different, and being foolish.. To a person reasonably far away, my decision will seem foolish. Hope to prove that hypothetical (and very possibly many real) person(s) wrong.

Apart from my IISc interviews this month beginning, I spent a few days at Bangalore. Didn’t like the cold all that much. Much better off in Madras . I met up with a few friends whom I know through my GATE preparation, but didn’t get a chance to meet earlier. Also met Chandan of Gateforum and spent an extremely enjoyable half day with him . The rest of the time spent in Madras, I’ve been working at IITM ostensibly as a project assistant, but essentially getting on with my MS. I felt there’s no point wasting time while I decide. If I decided to go to IITM, which I eventually did, this would be a great headstart. If I decided against IITM, this would be a nice experience and possibly a good addition to my CV .

Also attended Parallel Computer Architecture lectures by Prof. Simha Sethumadhavan from Columbia. This has led me to some joint work under him and prof Kamakoti that I’m doing currently. Its something on OS for multi-core architectures.

July - looking forward to move into the hostel and start my MS full tilt. That’s the biggest event I expect to happen in July. Also have to learn the Xen source code for the thing mentioned above. Very busy time ahead. I think my (already woefully poor) posting rate will (further) go down..

Also want to write a post on me getting multiple admits. There’s this big hullabaloo about how I’m “wasting” seats at IIT, “spoiling” the lives of others etc etc. Nothing of that sort! People are miserably uninformed and misinformed on the admission processes set up and followed by the IITs.

Some links:

Gateforum - Chandan’s big small company

Prof. Simha Sethumadhavan’s Homepage

Xen - for virtualization

Till the next post, bye.

karthrags

 

IIT - IIT Interview Trav{e,ai}ls

Hi,

Saw the title? Recursive definition, like GNU - GNU is Not Unix :D. I’m in bangalore now, for my IISc interviews. Yesterday I finished the CSA MSc (Engg) interview, which is the last of a very successful series of interviews

First was the Delhi interviews. I went there by train. Non-AC. It was quite an experience! The train went through 4 5 states, and each with a distinct character! Plains, wildlands, forests, hills, fruit groves - so much variety! I went to IIT Delhi one day early and spent the day exploring the campus. Its a small and beautiful campus and completely planned. It looks as if the whole land was flattened and then built. Every inch of the land seems used for buildings, lawns, walkways etc. And it was really well-maintained.. The hostel was another story altogether. Really messy, dirty, poorly maintained.. And the day ends so late! The first day there, me and my friend were outside chatting and never realized it was past 7. The plan was to study something, but didn’t do anything.

Next day morning Computer Applications (JCA) interview got over. It went quite smoothly, except for the beginning, when the prof fell out of his chair when he saw my aggregate of 84% :D. I was asked quite dumb questions from the subject I chose - Discrete Maths. in fact, I asked them more questions then they asked me :P. Their system was very good. All students were asked to register in one of 4 slots available, and it was enough of they came at that time. They had 4 list, for one slot each, and we just had to sign in one of them. Exactly the same system i set up for our symposium at college

Computer Technology (EET) interview was a nightmare. 100 students were stuffed into an auditorium, and the order of students interviewed was not released. Nobody knew when who’ll be interviewed, and the wait was really draining. Finally, at 6pm, came to know that my interview is after 10 more guys! So got mine postponed to first thing next morning. The interview was really turbulent :D. The profs were trying to irritate and unsettle me. One guy just walked off mid-sentence! And I too messed up a bit here and there. But it was ok overall. that day evening, met the HOD of maths (JCA is uder maths) and asked him how I did the interview. he told me that I was selected :). Later on, I came to know that I’m waitlisted for EET. There were only two CS students selected, and both in the waitlist.

Back home, I prepared for IIT madras MS interview. Studied graph theory as that was where I messed up badly in EET. IIT Madras was quite unlike IIT Delhi. The campus had a wild beauty about it. And it was much bigger when compared to IIT Delhi. The IIt Madras written test was full theory - questions were mostly from algorithms, recurrence relations and some discrete maths. It was a breeze for me :). As soon as i saw the paper, knew that I would clear. The interview panel was HUGE! I had 12 profs there! But the interview went very well. In fact, so well that I started suspecting they just wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible! So met the HOD and asked him how I did the interview. He told I’d done really well and that I’ll get an offer letter in a couple of weeks. Later that evening, I came to know that i’d topped the list

Left for Kanpur early next morning. My friend and I took a flight to Delhi and then train to Kanpur. We got to the station from the airport by metro. It was great! The train journey was good too. But met a couple of hindi chauvinists there. jingoists! Reached IIT Kanpur that night. IIT Kanpur’s campus was also very beautiful. But it is really big and the buildings are spread out a lot. A lot of walking was involved.. Next day morning there was a written test first. It was one of the best tests I’ve written :). It was mainly theory. 3 hours. I finished it in 1 1/2 hours and left! I didn’t know a few questions,but was too lazy to sit and work out. I was selected, and the interview was that day evening. It was a semi-disaster! The questions I got were on Logic as used in AI, and I had no idea of the terms they asked. The prof was very kind and politely said that logic should not be learnt the way I’ve done, though it wasn’t my fault:(. But the good thing was that he said I’m thinking well :). Thought I had no chance to get selected, but to my shock, when I checked online a couple of days later, my name was there!!!

Next post I’ll tell how the IISc interviews went. They were really tough!

karthrags

 

A Brief History Of Time (since last post)

Hi,

Long time no post. That’s because my semester exams were going on. Very much un-Anna University-ish papers they were, too! Mobile Computing, High Speed Networks and Software Quality Management were the papers..

Big thing up is my IIT admissions process. Leaving for Delhi tomorrow night. Not prepared much except for a smattering of discrete maths (what’s up with me and “sm”- words? smorgasbord, smattering… hmmm…) the train journey’s almost 40 hours! Same for return.. Attending two interviews there - MTech Computer Applications (which is maths+EE+CS interdisciplinary course) and MTech Computer Technology (CS+EE). Both sounds good.

Next up is the IIT Madras MS interview, on the 20th. I’m a bit scared about their written test, which is subjective, for an hour and 6 or 7 questions only. If you know the topic from which it’s asked, no problem. Else…. Once written test is over, if I’m deemed good enough, interview. Ooohh.. An unknown number of IIT profs trying to push me into a corner!

Immediately after that is the Kanpur MTech admission procedure. It was a major (pleasant (of sourse) ) (hmm… another interesting thing - nested bracketed comments, and cascaded comments, on comments within comments :D) surprise (I know what you did now. you went back to read the actual sentence again, didn’t you? ) that I got called for it. The cutoff is usually pretty high, and I’d've never made it. (finished the sentece at last, after numerous interruptions ) But this time they lowered it (owing to the overall poor performance of CS guys i presume) (hey, come to think of it, almost anyting can be bracketized no?) (another thing - you can really wade and meander out of context in brackets, and then resume outside as if nothing happened!!) and I managed to get a call (there you go again!). There’s a 3 hour, GATE-like test, and those who clear will have to go though a technical interview.

This post has been more about side comments and bracketing than about what happened since last post. Anyways, non-crossing partitions is a topic that’s a lot related to … brackets! (what else?) You partition a set of elements into pairs such that they don’t “cross”, that is, they do not interleave. either the two sets are adjacent, or one is wholly conained in another.

Consider 4 elements 1 2 3 4. Let the two sets be A and B.

valid non-crossing partitions:

1 2 3 4

A A B B

A B B A etc..

invalid non-crossing partitions:

1 2 3 4

A B A B etc..

If the set is made up of only two elements, and the number of each is the same, then we get the brackets syntax. But we understand it bottom-up. We understand it as each ‘)’ associated to the nearest ‘(’ before it, but actually if it is associated with something else, it becomes a crossing partition..

Wakay! After a long (owing to reader demand) (again, a bracket! (again, a bracket (hey, a bracket within a bracket(…infinitely recursively going on…)))) ( hey, tested the non-crossing ‘(’ and ‘)’ association here?) and very interesting (if a bit un-readable) post, I end it here (can almost hear you cheering!) (another brack - why do I think you don’t want me to start off again??). I’ll be running about the rest of the month, and will have a lot to update at the end of it all. Praying it ends well..

Relevant Links -

IIT Delhi Computer Applications Course Description

IIT Delhi Computer Technology Program Home

Non-Crossing Partition - Wikipedia (the picture explaining it is beautiful in this link)

karthrags

 

Comfortably Numb

Situation song/video.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

Hello, hello, hello
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?

Come on, come on down,
I hear you’re feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again.

Relax, relax, relax
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts.
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying.

When I was a child, I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I’ve got that feeling once again.
I can’t explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.

I have become comfortably numb.

[guitar solo]

I have become comfortably numb.

OK, OK, OK
Just a little pin prick.
There’ll be no more, aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh,
But you may feel a little sick.

Can you stand up, stand up, stand up.
I do believe it’s working good.
That’ll keep you going for the show.
Come on, it’s time to go.

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying.

When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look, but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child has grown, the dream is gone.

I have become comfortably numb.

The dream is gone..

 

JUSTIce Delayed

Got it! Am able to justify text now switched to HTML view and just added text-align attribute to all the p tags.. I had done it earlier, but only today realized that the p tag that i edited closed at the end of the header itself :”>

And after all this messing about, i found out about “kitchen sink”, which has the justify button :”>

karthrags

 

Things Are Happening!

Unusually exciting day! Started off with me waking up at 5 am!! I slept only at 1 am; was teaching my brother Discrete Maths - logic, set theory, relations and functions 

Got a job offer from C-DOT Alcatel-Lucent Research Centre they do WiMAX research

Got a call for the MS CS program at IIT Madras 

Got another job offer! From VEPL, a start-up that offers adaptive, online GRE training - wizdom.in :)

Right now, I’m spoilt for choices!

Some relevant links-

CARC

wizdom.in

Prof. Kamakoti’s Homepage - this is the person under whom I’ll do my MS, if things go well..

hoping that things go on well (applying Modus Ponens, I’ll do MS CS at IIT M )

karthrags