Working six days a week, unlike five in most sought after professions, teaching is a demanding job. This is a sufficient reason for claiming a break once in a while. But, as you may realize, we are speaking of educational … Continue reading
Long time after, I had an hour and half stint in the college sports room playing ping-pong with engineering students. It is a fascination I had developed while I was working with Intergraph Consulting, which slowly became one of my preferred sporting activities after my fitness has reached a stage where I would not take a chance of playing cricket or basket ball, but can’t leave playing ping-pong or carroms. 
Observing the games today was a different experience. It reminded me of Malcom Gladwell’s ideas of how underdogs manage to beat the favorites in almost one out of three games they face against one another. I could see that students who did not know how to hold the paddle began winning, and consistently too. Perhaps the odds were a little deviant even in comparison with Gladwell’s observation that it really made me think about; when an underdog begins believing his capacity to win; when a favorite begins surrendering the game by sitting on the game like a sleeping hare; and generally lots of other related questions about game dynamics that were intriguing.
Result: I began at 4:40 PM on 17th September, 2011 to try and figure out a method of capturing data from a ping-pong game that indicated scores, each player’s probability of victory, degree of certainty of a victory, and how those values change at every point in the game. It is 02:00 AM on 18th September, 2011 before I figured out a reasonable way of doing it. I am satisfied with my little achievement today. What does this crazy effort mean to me now? It is this. I read Gladwell’s observations, but I have seen how those are possible, in numbers, now. I know people talk about the importance of having momentum in the game, and I understand it much better now. I heard people talking about having the killer instinct to close the game soon, I see reasons why one should develop that instinct. I saw players getting advised not to be complacent, I find a point in that advice. What more? I think I am moving towards a major empirical work for publication in an Impact Factored Journal–setting myself a timeline of two years from now.
Thanks God! I am back in the World of Mathematics.
I am surprised that I could not spare time to blog, perhaps my favourite pass time activity for a while. May be, I think now, I was engaged with offline life, not that my online life is separate. But let me just recall all the action that I was part of in the last few days, some of which I think is exciting.
Science Expo @ GITAM:
GITAM Institute of Science, under the able guidance of Dr. Lakshman Das has conducted a science expo within its premises. Children from schools around the place flocked together for a few days to look at those eye-catching prototypes made by the students of science college, and learn what they are as these student volunteers also offered explanation to all visitors. A little shame on me, I did not know it was happening; yet I was lucky too, I made it to the show on the last day. I would have missed it if I did not leave my ignorance. I recalled my childhood days when we made some of these little masterpieces for exhibition, and were proud to get just that little pat-on-your-back from strangers visitors. I knew its value and had my hands ready to give a lot of that to the volunteers there. I sure did give a few.
One of the girls there began to explain to me how much our daily food may be contaminated. It was an impressive speech she offered. At the end of her speech, out of curiosity, I asked if she knew how to tackle the food quality issues in real life. Her explanation tells me that she was made to believe that government passed an order to put a symbol on all packaged food which can indicate the quality of food, and that all packaged food has such symbols. Are you surprised? At least I was. I sought clarification about where I could find that symbol, and what she showed me was a green circle in a green square. It is a symbol that tells us that the packaged food is hundred percent vegetarian. I shared my little piece of knowledge with her. Perhaps, she was happy. Her communication style was open and relaxed. Obviously, that makes her a friendly fellow being. Overall, despite a few misinformed volunteers, the show was a treat to all children who paid a visit.
Circuiting the city for an Experiment:
At the college, one of the experiments we are doing demands us to find locations which are unique, sketchable and easily describable. Earlier, I circuited (about 120kms) the city at least six times to identify a possible sixty locations from over a hundred that I must have first visited. These locations were to be visited by the entire team to check if they fit the requirement. This step was an essential part of the experiment to establish what we call as inter-judge reliability. In the absence of all the seniors, somehow I took charge and got the college to arrange a cab for us, unlike my tiring bike rides earlier.
This is summer time fast approaching. We decided to start our day early and finish the visits as early as we could to avoid staying under the sun. The day therefore began pleasantly. But slowly, eventually, the air-conditioned car proved toothless (or should I say, cool-less) in its battling the sun. Overall, it was unavoidably another extremely tiring day for the entire team; but the work is at least getting towards the happy conclusion. Just to keep up our motivation to work, we took little breaks in locations that were scenic; and to keep our bodies running we had a continuous intake of liquids, both hot and cold.
End of the day, just for fun, I asked one of my colleagues, “Wasn’t that exercise great? We did so much. How about doing it again?” Promptly, the answer came, a big No. A day that started at 6:30 AM and goes on to 5:00 PM circuiting the entire city, not like a tourist but like researcher, was definitely not entertaining.
Life’s Moments:
While we were circuiting, at one stop, we had coconut water. The one who did the bargaining was a teammate who does not know the local language. The argument between the vendor and my teammate began blowing up, all for the extra ten rupees the vendor asked. Perhaps that is the nature of bargaining. However, the twist in the story hit me hard when everybody looked at me as if I can be the translator. And I did! In the end, we walked away without paying the extra ten rupees to the vendor. On the way back, my teammate wanted to know what I said to manage the bargain. What I told the vendor really was that my teammate might get into a fist fight but not pay the extra money. Knowing this, she really did get into one, unfortunately with me.
After the circuiting was finished, we thought our day ended. But just as we were about to head home, I got a call from the college asking me to attend the net practice sessions. I could not deny that since it could be my last opportunity to represent a university cricket team. I did participate and definitely managed to grab the attention from a few good players already in the team. The day I thought was tiring after circuiting was even worse as I ended my net sessions. Barely able to see steadily, I walked towards the temple on our campus where drinking water was available. As I was drinking, I heard the priest of the temple say “Get out from there, how dare you come in with shoes?”. I was a good fifteen yards away from the temple premises when I got this warning. I had just one question flashed in my human mind, “Is this what religion/god taught him?”. He is a brahmin (who should actually mean enlightened) who was definitely not concerned about someone’s thirst as he was about the rituals and routine.
