Personal blog of Harshvardhan Joshi

A week back I collected the first set of results for my Master's thesis research. They showed protocol A to be better than B - which was expected.
I was delighted, and a little surprised too - for even I had not expected A to be so much better.
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Our department moved to a new building, EB2, in January this year after the building completion was much delayed. It was obvious that an attempt was made to recover at least some part of the increased cost due to delay by lowering the quality - compared to the adjacent building EB1 which was completed at least a year earlier. The cost cutting was especially conspicuous in the restrooms, being the second least important rooms (after graduate student offices). The men's room in EB1 is luxurious - fitted with sensors for auto flush and the rest of the works. On the other hand the men's rooms in EB2 are the regular kind, except that they are new (I cannot comment on the women's rooms, having never visited them in either of the building).

Being a regular user of restrooms in both the buildings, in those days I gave considerable thought to the optimal design of men's room and saving costs. The problem that occupied me was how the men's room could be designed to save costs without lowering the quality as experienced by the users. Durability was one of the most important factor considering that the restrooms will have to serve generations of students. I noticed that the restrooms on 2nd and 3rd floor (with only research labs and faculty offices) operated at low load, rarely servicing multiple users. I also noticed that most users preferred to use the second commode (henceforth referred to as 'server'), or server 2, from the entrance - server 1 being specially designed for children or handicapped persons - and that the general preference was for a server closest to the entrance. I further noticed that most users prefer not to use a server adjacent to an existing user but rather skip that one and go to the next available server. Given these observations, I hypothesized that server 2 is likely to serve the most number of users in a sufficiently large time period; that server 2 is likely to suffer the highest wear and tear; and that if server 2 were made of very high endurance material while the rest of the servers made from lower grade material, over a long period of time the quality experienced by the users will not be significantly different. I felt that had I been given the job of designing the restrooms, I would have used the electronic sensors already installed in EB1 to collect data on the arrival intervals and service time to make a queueing model of the restrooms and decide which servers are more likely to be busy and use that model in efficient design of restrooms.

On an otherwise unremarkable day in May 2006, while on a routine visit to the restroom on the 3rd floor, I suddenly noticed that the server 2 looked visibly dull compared to the adjacent servers. It looked like server 2 had considerably lost its shine, its newness. I washed my face and looked again - but I couldn't deny the fact. There was server 2: staring at me - a proof that my hypothesis was true - and I stood there, vindicated.

I was delighted, and a little surprised too - for even I had not expected to see results within 5 months.

For a few days I was basking in the glory of this success. However, once the initial euphoria was over the skeptic in me wanted more proof. I visited the 2nd floor restroom but failed to see any significant difference in the state of the servers. I ran to the other wing of the building, but again - no difference. What made the restroom on 3rd floor special, why did it show signs of wear so early. Wild theories came to my mind, but I decided to investigate more closely before forming an opinion. I went to the restroom and started investigating - I looked closely at server 2, looked at both the adjacent servers, looked at all the servers. I looked all around but couldn't find a clue to the mystery. Oh God !, I said, show me a way, throw a light on this mystery, and I looked up towards heavens. And there it was !!! The clue !! The light !! Or the absence of it. Each of the servers had a soft, reflecting light above it but the one above server 2 was not working. This made it look dull compared to the other servers. Though server 2 may actually deteriorate earlier than the other servers, its present look was just an illusion. My hypothesis will have to wait longer for its proof.
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A week back I collected the first set of results for my Master's thesis research. They showed protocol A to be better than B - which was expected.
I was delighted, and a little surprised too - for even I had not expected A to be so much better.

Yesterday I attended a presentation titled "Can a robot see the way we see?". It was an interesting presentation, made even more interesting by the presenter's enthusiastic delivery (and the fact that he looked a little like Jackie Chan). The case studies involving some rare illusions, though long, were very well received; however they left very little time for the central ideas of consciousness, one's concept of self and whether we can know anything with cetainty. But the most important thing is: the food at the end was good...
In the presentation the case studies were about some of the illusions patients have had about their body, imagining body parts which weren't existent or denying the existence of their own body parts. Interesting as these illusions may be, they are quite rare. Fortunately, most of us don't experience our body in a way that conflicts with other's concept of it (or external reality). However, its quite common for people to experience emotions and not be quite sure about them. In fact (some) psychologists believe that people experience emotional arousal and then search the environment for an explanation. Thus specific emotions are differentiated and labeled based on external cues. (Read more about it and an interesting experiment on my website)
This means that the labels we give to the emotions are selected in face of uncertainty, and the decisions are largely unconscious, with chances of error. For example, everytime I am excited and enjoying a conversation and it turns to food, I feel hungry. And I've known someone who spends some time with a girl in, what he thinks, romantic situations and he is convinced he is in love with her. Like the men in the Dutton & Aaron study, he (mis?)labels his emotions as love. Fortunately for him, he can easily switch labels and move on, but others are not that fortunate and become unhappy. On the other hand, there are people who inspite of strong feelings for someone refuse to call it love and try to trivialize the emotions. Very likely they have acquired a fear of rejection through classical conditioning (which serves an important function of protecting their emotional stability).
So the problem is: the labels we give to emotions are influenced by external factors and we would like to minimize the effects of these external factors to reduce errors in labelling; we cannot identify the emotion with certainty - we can only hope to achieve high confidence levels; we are especially concerned about not making errors with important emotions like love.
Thus we are faced with a typical problem of statistical inference with two possible types of errors. alfa: accepting a hypothesis(H0) when it is not true and beta: rejecting a hypothesis(H0) when it is true. Now, which type of error should we try to reduce (we cannot reduce both). Should we reduce the error of labeling an emotion love when it is not in fact so? Or should we reduce the error of refusing to recognize love? Again statistics can provide the answer. Typically in statistics we select (no change) as the null hypothesis(H0) and its complement as the alternative hypothesis(H1). Thus in this example H0 whould be : the emotion felt is not love. And H1 would be: the emotion experienced is indeed love. And typically in statistics we tend to reduce alpha errors, i.e. accepting H0 when it is not true: concluding that emotion felt is not love when it is so. As a Sanskrit subhashit says: Vachane kah daridrata? - why be parsimonious with words/labels.

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An interesting implication of the above theory is that a third person can identify and analyze an emotion with as much accuracy as the person experiencing the emotion - as both use external environment for that purpose. The only information exclusive to the person experiencing the emotion is the extent of emotional arousal or the strength of the feeling (though even this may be measured externally using autonomic response!!).

Last couple of days have been singularly boring. Getting my laptop was an anti-climax. I was hoping for some excitement, but none there. There was a glimmer of hope when I saw only 32 GB hard-disk instead of 40 GB expected. But, friends told me that was expected in a Thinkpad. Rest was reserved for backup. Nice strategy. So much less data to be backed up.

There are no exciting news after Bush left India, except for an earthquake in Gujarat and bomb blasts in Varanasi. And these news are not even worth half a day of reading. Desperate for some activity online, I have been checking my e-mails at the rate of ten times a minute. I hate to admit it, but I even thought of writing an e-mail to myself. But then realized that an e-mail is maya, its ephemeral. It gets marked by e-mail daemon (archaic: demon) as 'read', and even gets deleted. It gives satisfaction but only once. Its not satya (Truth), as Adi Shankaracharya says, saatatya (Permanence) is a defining quality of satya. Only truth is the Blog. It is ever-lasting. The only constant in this changing world. You can read it again and again. It gives pleasure to all, without discrimination - reinforcing the principle of advaita (Oneness of all - rather non-duality). Thus, having realized this, I became Buddha (Enlightened). Its another matter that friends have, since long, lovingly called me buddhu. Since the world is such an inseparable mixture of satya and maya, so should be my post. Having decided thus, I created this post from an e-mail written four yrs ago.

(All of the above was the maya part. The truth is, I was so bored that I was reading old e-mails. Liked one of them. And all of the above was a filmsy and ill-conceived pretext of putting it up here)

From: "Harshvardhan Joshi"
Date: Mon Dec 16, 2002 12:16 am
Subject: Road

hi

by now results of elections must have come. there's much interest
here in the outcome.

i am at the office, laboring on a report. The Controller of Operations (COO)
along with a SOB (Son of Boss) has come since one week. and i have to submit
a report to him on the performance, based on KRAs, of branches under our
controlling. its been one month since i had an off.

it seems to me that i've been working here forever, with no hope of escape.
the only bright aspect being the city.

the roads of coimbatore have influenced me a lot. they have made me a
believer (a feat not achieved even by the parliament). the otherwise polite
people take out their aggression on the road. according to a survey, 'a'
type behaviour (a term used by psychologists to denote, i understand,
agressive behaviour)on the roads here is much higher than elsewhere. here
two lane roads are considered broad. if 'Road' the movie had been made on
coimbatore roads it would surely have had a tragic end. talking about
movies, the bus drivers here are a great fan of sandra bullock (or keanu
reeves), for 'Speed' is enacted here everyday. there had been bomb blasts in
cbe in 1998. so bus drivers are not taking any risk. they dont go below 50
within city limits. once on highway the speed limit just doubles. and i
assure you from personal experience that its very thrilling to ride in a bus
going at 100. you would never feel sleepy.
but everybody's not so lucky, since there are no old ladies with cart
crossing the road, the drivers have to do with knocking off two wheelers.
the traffic police here can be a model for all cities. the cops are always
smartly dressed with gloves and all. they could be coming from usa. they are
also well equipped, with enfield bullets painted white and fitted with loud
speakers. on every cross roads, you will find them in their booth. (there
being no paan shops - since tobacco is banned here). they are so well
trained and polite and calm, that people regularly jump red lights without
any punishment. i believe they must have attended Art of Living. there are
also many female traffic police, to be identified by the lack of moustache.
of the many signboards erected by the traffic police, the most notable is
the speed limit sign. you will find it at very 200 meters declaring the
speed limit as 32 kmph within city limits. i wonder how they came to this
exact figure. maybe the traffic commissioner was an electronic engineer and
wanted to optimize the 5 bits allocated to storing speed limit. however it
becomes very difficult to observe this rule. because i am yet to see a
speedometer (tachometer, to be technically correct) with this resolution and
accuracy. and ironically, a cbe based co. - pricol (premier instruments and
controls ltd.)- is the leading supplier of speedometers in India and abroad.
if you will look at the speedometer of your bike/scooter or car, you will
find pricol written at the bottom.

everybody's wondering how come i am working so sincerely today. people have
started taking a peek at what i am writing. so i will stop my flow of words
here and will send the next installment next sunday, when i am sure i will
find myself working.

bye for now.

joshi

Half a bowl of rice and some curry. That was all. And the curry was 3 days old. He had looked in the fridge 3 times. It was his cooking turn. No vegetables. Even the 'sell by' date on milk was yesterday's. He had been in the US long enough to know that milk sours on the 'sell by' date. Half a bowl of rice and some curry, that was all he had. And he had an exam tomorrow.

He thought of his roommate. He would ask him to get groceries. He can quickly prepare some sabji if his roommate could get vegetables and paratha from the Indian store. Oh, but the roommate had a paper due this week. How could he forget. Must do something about this memory thing. He opened the fridge the fourth time, and cursed. And then he remembered. Oh, how could he forget. Last time they went to the Indian store, they had got a dozen packets at three packets a buck. He opened the cupboard above the stove, and looked behind the duct. Ah, there they were. The Maggi.
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The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who came "from the east" and brought gifts to the infant Jesus. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones. But the wisest of them all survived the test of time and travelled with the descendants of Jesus's messengers back to the east. And there, in the land of the last surviving magi, that gift was embraced by the people and was called "Maggi".
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Isn't it ironic that India is mad for Maggi, while Ramen is the 'top' brand in the US?

Last week while watching President Bush deliver the State of the Union address, I had some ideas which I would like to document here:

1. When I reached home at 9.15 pm and turned on the TV, I saw the President say something and the audience gave standing ovation, even the Vice President and Speaker who were chairing the assembly got up to applause. I was disappointed at missing the speech, but was also amazed at the State of the Union that it can be so short. Everybody knows that the Union has seen better times but was the state of the Union so bad that one can't even speak about it for more than a few minutes? But it turned out that I was too hasty in my apprehensions, the President continued his speech. For a few minutes I counted the number of times the audience stood up to applaud but then I lost the count. The White House website, which records the speech has counted 66 applause in the 51 minute speech. For most of these applause atleast the republican part of the audience stood up, and many times the democrats also joined them.

This gave me a valuable insight into the demographics of American politics. We often compare Indian politicians with American and wonder at the youth and energy of American politicians. No wonder speeches like State of the Union ensure that only the young and fit can survive in American politics. To applaud 66 times in 51 minutes, one not only needs strong hands but strong knees too (no place for Vajpayeeji here), as one has to get up to applaud. And when goings get tough, like after 9/11, the system ensures that only tough people survive by having 76 applause in 53 minutes for 2002 State of the Union. Thus, with a simple tradition like this a nation can ensure that its leaders are young and fit.


2. If you are looking for the reason that USA is still the country of dreams, of freedom and of possibilities for poor and repressed around the globe, look no further. The water fountain outside your office, or classrooms, or at the airports, or at the convention center is reason enough. The omnipresent water fountains symbolize the hope this country offers to people, that they will not be crushed by the large corporations, by the capitalists, by the powerful; that even when the government is heavily influenced by large corporations, the soft-drinks companies cannot deny basic amenities like free water to the common people. The barely audible hum of a water fountain tells the story of victory of a modern David over Goliath, of the victory of masses over large corporations.

When the whole world is watching the President deliver State of the Union address, with the hope of deliverance from the tyrants, hoping for true democracy, it is regrettable that the President ignores the very symbol of democracy - the water fountain - and chooses to drink water out of a glass.

We propose to develop and manufacture a microphone and podium with in-built water fountain. With a simple push of a button the speaker can start the fountain, and the strategically placed microphone, which doubles as the fountain, can direct a stream of water in the speaker's open mouth. This is especially useful for the President, as while he drinks water, he can keep an eye on the audience and note who didn't get up to applause. And since the President didn't (or is it can't?) read from notes, there is no fear of their getting wet. For speakers who prefer to read from notes, we can have two tops for the podium. One of them can be coated with teflon, so that it doesn't get wet, and water flows off it easily. The other (lower) one can be a temporary receptacle for notes, to be used when the water fountain is on. The teflon top can be slanted towards speaker, but it will be rather deep to stop both notes and water from overflowing.

In numerous discussions with my roommates, I have held that I like research in physical sciences because it heavily depends on deduction rather than induction like life sciences (which interests them). In physical sciences, once you know the universal laws you can reliably and accurately predict the behavior of any system; knowing the general rule you can apply it to a specific instance. And the laws or rules are derived from a relatively few postulates, making study of physical sciences less memory intensive. The 'truth' in physical sciences is deterministic, or atleast has a steady state probability distribution. On the other hand, life sciences (like behavioral & social sciences) make a large number of observations and tend to generalize them to a rule based on statistical induction. Thus, the 'truth' is rarely deterministic, and many times has a dynamic distribution, with the probabilities changing with each new study.

A few days back I was complaining to a friend about my back pain. I said it must be because I am not getting enough sleep and rest. He said, my not getting sleep (Y) must be caused by my thinking about something (X) (he actually said somebody :-)) I had also reached the same conclusion independently, but since he put it in words I saw a flaw in the reasoning. Based on observations, everytime I can't sleep Y, I think of X. Thus, there is high correlation between X & Y, but can we conclude that X causes Y? It is equally possible that since I can't sleep and have nothing better to do I think of X. Is there anyway in which we can prove a causal relationship between X & Y? For all we know, both X and Y may be caused by a third variable Z (e.g. age), resulting in high correlation between X & Y. All we can do is notice the correlation and speculate on the causes. We cannot even reliably say whether the cause of insomnia is psychological or physiological. The same argument applies to sleep and back pain - we cannot say which causes the other. Thus, proving causal relationship (what is called "kaarya - kaaran siddhanta" in sanskrit) is a major pitfall in life sciences, making its discoveries as speculative and reliable as price discovery in stock markets.

Some people believe that the biggest problem in India is its toothless laws. Often comparisons are made with the western countries to show the disparity in legal penalties for the same offence. e.g. A traffic violation carries a penalty of only Rs. 50 (approx. $1) for a two-wheeler and Rs. 100 ($2) for a four-wheeler. Or, the mean penalty (fines & damages) for environmental violations in USA from 1980-2000 was $8.8 million (another study - $9.43 million), while in India all a pollution control board might do is lock up the violating unit.
With all the calls to add more teeth to laws, and strongly believing in "being the change you want to see", I decided to take immediate action. Hence, I added more teeth, 3.75 to be exact.

My teeth have been a constant source of amazement and amusement for people since years. The two upper incisors were the most conspicuous by their absence. My parents, alarmed when the teeth failed to appear a long time after the normal age, visited many dentists without any success. All of them failed to notice that Nature had more than compensated me in some other part of the skull for this deficiency. Since I was observing silence at that time I couldn't remind them that God giveth and God taketh away, and in my case there was so much less for God to take away. With respect to the gaps between my teeth, being 'susanskrit', my parents took comfort in the sanskrit saying: "How many bald men are poor, How many singing women are sati, How many dantaala (a person with large gaps between teeth) are unlucky, Very few, Very few".

However, three years back I lost one more teeth (that story is given below) and was left with only 1.25 incisors instead of the regular 4. The surviving incisor, instead of rejoicing on being the only one - 'the one' - like Neo, started complaining and even threatened to quit the job by slowly moving outwards with ambitions to see the vast world outside. However, I was undeterred by all these, and decided to add more teeth only with the noble intentions outlined in the first few lines.

I have chronicled below the story of the premature demise of a young tooth, for the benefit of posterity.

Date: Sat Nov 16, 2002 7:43 pm
Subject: from proud owner of 19 teeth

hi

hope everybody had a happy diwali.

for me this diwali will be the most memorable one.
i lost one of my several (more than 20!!) teeth on diwali.....

i had gone to ooti with two other ppl. its about 100 kms. we had a very nice time. ooti is really great place....

on the second day (diwali) at one of the waterfalls i slipped on a stone and lost one tooth. my boss and colleagues here believe that i fell becoz i got drunk. that tells something about the reputation ooty and i enjoy.

well, romy i will be here when u come in december. especially to show u some of the very interesting sign boards in coimbatore. for example
1. when u see a board 'Yes Pee Yes Co.', don't think its a southern counterpart of Sulabh International. its not a urinal. the name is derived from its owner whose initials are SPS.
2. there is a Maruti service station with a board visible from half a kilometer saying 'Maruthee Service station'. thankfully it also has the maruti logo to help outsiders.
3. 'Tiching charge' means tution fees. (teaching)
4. There is a two storeyed building proudly declaring itself 'S B Towers'

and this is just tip of the proverbial iceberg.....

Finally, the online collection of Gujarati poems and song lyrics is up. Arnav bought a server yesterday, which may be used when the collection becomes too large for me to host.

Since summer I've been recollecting Gujarati poems I studied in school, even though at that time I used to just skip the verses and read only stories from the textbooks. And the very few poems that I liked, my father had forbidden me to sing :)
I can't claim to having been a big fan of Gujarati songs either, though there were some (very few) songs that were among my alltime favorites. Nevertheless, when I tried to find Gujarati poems / lyrics I could find only a few after hours of searching.

So, that takes care of the motivation part of it. Now, problems (being) faced:
I was introduced to ITRANS last year, when I had decided to make a collection of lyrics of songs by K L Saigal (that project, btw, is shelved since months and that is the reason for this public announcement). However, those were Hindi film songs and the online interface for compiling ITRANS was perfect for that. But the output for Gujarati is way below satisfactory, as the interface doesn't accept LaTex commands. So I tried to to compile it in LaTex myself, but there are some font and .ifm file problems that I've not been able to fix yet, and the website was getting delayed. So I've gone ahead and put up the website, and hopefully when I'm in India in December I'll be able to contribute more poems.

Meanwhile, enjoy !!!

Maybe probability theory can help us understand a key to happiness, that ancient wisdom - Expect the worst and hope for the best.

Most of the outcomes or events in real world are not deterministic, i.e . we cannot reliably predict an outcome. We discard deterministic outcomes as trivial and focus on non-deterministic ones and call them random variables. (An example of random variable is Y = love(Xi), where Y is a girl, and X1, X2, ...., Xn are independent and identically distributed boys wooing the girl)

A random variable of our interest has a probability distribution, either known or unknown to an individual. However, irrespective of the knowledge of the distribution each individual makes estimation of the distribution and holds some expectation of the outcome. If the outcome equals the expectation it creates satisfaction, if it exceeds the expectation it creates delight, both of which may be collectively referred to as happiness. However, when an outcome or event fails to meet expectation it results in frustration, regression, or denial. (Refer to the Content Theories of Motivation, e.g. ERG, Maslow, Hertzberg, etc)

So far we have established that if the outcome meets or exceeds the expectation it results in happiness, and that expectations are estimated by individuals. Thus it is simple to show that the lower an individual's expectations, higher are the chances of an outcome being greater than or equal to the expectations, resulting in higher chances of her/his happiness.
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So now you have the key to happiness. You can start using it right now: Don't expect this to give you any happiness !!!

Download gujarati songs from this ftp server.

You can also listen to gujarati internet radio with channels like gazals, garba, songs, jokes, etc.