Category Archives: Oscillating Mind

Category with no specific purpose. Surprisingly, my goal is simpler now.

On Financial Education

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I invested in the share market.

It is a kind of courageous statement for someone who had a painful answer to a rather curious question: how can I be rich? The lessons from my stock market investments have been too costly for me to venture getting the complete answer. But over time, I have learnt that investing is not necessarily the best way to learn the trade. There are other sources too! And frankly, in the kind of financial complexity that we live in, I think one needs to be aware of various investment opportunities and how they might fare well before putting in their money. Thanks to the recent developments I went through; my boss, the head of the department has recently been trained by SEBI, India to deliver such awareness sessions, and he had done one of his first few sessions in our college itself. I would not call it a complete guide to financial investing, however, it at least sets up a platform from where I can plan further.

Recalling, there were times I said, I will never again invest in stock market. Perhaps it is time for me to revisit that line and see if it is worth sticking in my head. At the moment, I just wish as I am about to experiment again, that the financial systems offered to its consumers, a way out of complexity through straight talk.

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Here is one website I have recently stumbled on, Loans.net. On the face of it, it was hard for me to identify what this was all about. But soon figured out that this was one system that integrates financial instruments for various organisations and offers the one that best fits the customers’ need. It also has lots of content that talks about different kinds of loans. Perhaps, this is one kind of place where I want to begin–draw money, and then invest. ;)

Math of the mind

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Since Edwin May gave me his line, “Don’t always believe what you think’, my life took different twists and turns. The best of all, I think I am working on science now. Discussions with him showed me how amazingly stupid human beings can be, especially when we fight with our beliefs against the realities of our programmed animal-like behavior. It feels painful, even to me, to acknowledge this; but lets do it first, because only then would we make any meaningful effort to understand how we think.

Let me present one example, for which I could collect pieces of literature that could lend strong support. Have you ever thought about how we estimate lengths, distances, colors and contrasts, or sounds for that matter? If you have not already done that, just ask yourself if you could be accurate in estimating the differences in intensity of light or sound. You need not be computer precise, but even if you think you can roughly estimate the difference, I would say, you need to read some more about how our perception works. The fact of the matter is this: Our senses don’t work on linear scales, but they work on logarithmic scales. What does this mean? It means we need really significant change (perhaps in exponential steps) to be able to perceive difference in anything we sense. Actually, the  unit of sound, Decibel, is a logarithmic unit.

You don’t believe me! You can read these:

  • Fechner Law states that subjective sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus intensity. Later on, there were developments and controversies over the general applicability of this law. And in came, Steven’s Power Law which holds that the magnitude of perceived intensity depends on the magnitude of the physical intensity raised to some power (which is still no comparison to linear scales). A more recent study also points out the limitations of human perception.
  • This page here gives a reasonable account, through of which scale suits our senses best, linear or logarithmic.
  • This paper here neatly summarizes the common principles that govern all our senses, and how all of them might actually be plotted on a logarithmic scale.
If you still think you can identify linearly occurring differences in physical reality, you need to come out of your dogma.

When green is not green

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I wake up every morning and see the hills far from my house. It is a pleasant sight to begin the day, usually. Today was a little different, because my eyes caught something more fascinating. These hills, I know, would be lush green if I went close to them. But they were looking rather hazy, more blackish and greyish in patches, with an overall impression that sufficiently convinces us that there is more green (or perhaps, we are convinced because we know it has to be green!). I set out to find the answer.

I had this initial hypothesis that perhaps the atmosphere is serving as some kind of a lens that is hampering my vision. So my search was for ‘atmospheric lens’ and words similar to it. After reading a few pages I realized I was reading more photography and optics[1,2,3]. I sensed that my hypothesis could be proving correct. While I have not yet exhaustively tested my ideas, I think I have come up with a reasonable explanation to the phenomenon observed.

For starters you can read about how a human eye works here [4,5]. Eye captures the light and converts the optical signals into electrical signals before the optical nerve carries them to the brain where an image can be perceived. This indicates that the quality of light affects the quality of vision. This is the reason why objects which are close to us can be seen more clearly while objects at a distance lack detail (objects too close to the face also cannot be seen clearly which takes us into another technical detail. In summary we are talking of focal length. You may read more about it here).

I am loving it. What I have just done is to recall a concept that slept safely in my ignorant brain, Optics. Refreshing! You think this is trivial? I would bet you did not know the answer was so simple when you read the question. ;)

What I could write

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Not that I have nothing to write, but a question ‘whether I should‘ has been troubling since a week or two. The frequency of my blogging appears to have gone down, and it feels as if I am forcing myself to write a few things. That aside, I have changed my blog theme many times in two years to keep myself interested in doing things differently. Those who have followed my blog since beginning would relate to the new change easily. This is the theme with which I began blogging. There is always a special connection my heart has to this theme. It encourages me to write things I have not thought about before!

Here is my new post then. I just thought I could present you the couple of ideas I could have written about in the last week.

  • I observed a conversation between a teacher and his old student. I recall being the student discussing with my teacher, being a teacher discussing with my student, and now, I had this opportunity to observe the conversation and have a third eye view of how it feels. As a student, I thought my teacher was always wise. As a teacher, I thought all students were alike in their concerns. And now, funnily for me, as an observer, I recognize that all teacher-old student conversations are intricately similar.
  • I observed that I had different experience teaching to two different sections of students. And the difference in experience was primarily because of the time I was spending with them. Where I had limited access to students, students paid more attention to the class, and in general, my teaching experience felt rich. And where students had more time and access to my classes, their attention was diluted, focus was dissipated, attitude was mixed and casual; this was where I felt a little out of decisive control on what and how I could teach in the class. Also, while my general disappointment with students remains as it is, there are different things I am learning from my new community of teachers. And I still find it difficult to make the students turn in their assignments in time.
I guess I have written what I wanted to. My next post I wish could be on procrastination. ;)

What students talk…

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I had to delay writing this till now, because I was excited watching India put it in for England as a payoff for what they got in the last series. It feels fantastic to see India winning. So I get into the story of the day now.

Incident One:

I was tying my shoe laces in the playground as I overheard this conversation of a student with her friend over the phone. She was animated as she said,

“That is what he does always. The lab assistant is a moron. When I ask him a doubt, he has only one response, which is to suggest me to consult the senior faculty. What kind of an idiot he must be. When I ask him for clarification in the lab work itself, he comes in and shouts out to read the question again, only a little slowly. And honestly, we don’t understand anything. Just imagine! Why would we ask him a doubt if we could understand what is written in the question? He doesn’t have brain at all. Once when I asked for further clarification on a question, he started scolding me for not paying attention when he explained, but all he did was to actually shout out the question only more slowly. How do people think, talking slowly can clarify doubts, unless they are elaborating on the concept? And then, these people think of themselves as Pundits in their subject.”

All I could do was give her a smile and board my bus back home. :)

Incident Two:

While I was walking back to the department from library, I found a couple of lazy asses having a chat. The sitting lazy ass was requesting (it wouldn’t be nice if I said royal begging!) the standing lazy ass to get him a cool drink. Just as the standing lazy ass moved his butt, he found two girls walking in that direction, perhaps his classmates. Now, the standing lazy ass orders (literally!) to one of those girls to get a drink for him and for the sitting lazy ass. I can’t still figure out why the girls have accepted that piece of crappy job, but just as they moved a feet further, story takes another turn. The sitting lazy ass now gets into a tiff with the standing lazy ass asking why he delegated the job he was supposed to do (he was perhaps trying to save his face by getting on the girls’ side). And now, the standing lazy ass says, “You should use girls, at least like this”. What a moron he must have been to have said that? All that those girls could do was to look at me for a second, turn down their faces, and briskly walk away from that place. I am sure, those lazy asses have not yet figured out what they had done to those girls’ self-respect, as the bystanders and on-movers were watching the scene.

From both incidents, I could observe one feature common: that these students have absolutely no sense of ‘who is where’, ‘who is listening’, and ‘what to talk’.

God. Please spare my senses from witnessing such incidents which make me believe that your creation itself was by mistake.

I saw Jupiter

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Someone asked me what was the craziest thing I could do, and I told them ‘cloud watching‘. Yesterday was a full-moon day and there were plans of going by the beach side to see if I could capture a few good snaps. Our plan materialized. Here are some snaps!

What is so special about an amateur cloud watcher putting up his snaps? Obviously, there has to be a reason. I found out just now that one of my snaps is a little special, in that it captured something I did not expect to see. Read the news here which says we have seen the smallest full moon of the year yesterday (largest full moon was seen on 19th March, 2011), because the moon was at its apogee (apogee is the farthest point from earth, perigee is the nearest point to earth). Not only was it an occasion where we had saw the smallest moon, but it was also an occasion where Jupiter was shining brightly. In one of my pictures above, luckily for me, to make my snap special, Jupiter has found a place–just like it was said, shining brightly. I realize now, I saw Jupiter! Wish I had a telescopic camera. ;)