I make pi look rational

I make pi look rational!

Finding a pattern in the word pi has been one of man’s most unsuccessful ventures. The accuracy of representing pi has been one of mans greatest struggle in his wish to express his views in the mathematical world that we live in. Pi is an irrational number, which we in our schools substitute by the number 22/7 but in reality it is not a rational number, i am sure most of you know that and it is a constant that one gets by dividing the circumference of a circle by its diameter (pi = 2*pi*r/(2*r)). Yes you can try this with a piece of string and let me know what turns up.

This was my Gmail status for some time... and people kept asking me what it meant and why nothing was turning up in Google search when they looked it up.

The fact is I just thought it up and put it up as my status. People who know me will definitely mention somewhere or the other that I am irrational. May be I am, may be I am not... however, I have come across many situations where I found myself thinking about circumstances differently.

I am fascinated by shortcuts. Whenever someone shows me that there is an easier way of doing things, I try to learn it as quick as possible so that there is lot of time to do other things. For example I found that while solving DSP assignment, it took tremendously less time if I sat and did it all at once, instead of doing say 2 problems each day. This was because most of the problems had repetitions in many calculations.

There have been occasions when my teachers have asked me to shut up whenever I asked some doubt because the teacher failed to see the problem in my way. This has not however deterred me. In maths especially, in my 7^th standard my teacher got annoyed that I was giving away the solutions to problems on simultaneous linear equations before the whole question was completed, and made sure that I gave away answers only after I had written down each and every step that led to the solutions.

I have had big dreams, have had my share of expectations from life. But somehow it always seems that i was surrounded by people who kept telling me that things in life are very difficult. If you ask me, I will say that i have not seen anything so absurd, its as if life runs on autopilot, as long as you perform your share of responsibilities.

Not just that, i have been fascinated by how a coin rolls over and finally decides to lie on one of its sides. I am fascinated by what caused water to turn like a whirlpool, at my home sink. I am sure one of you is going to paste links to convince me that there are theories behind all this yes, i have already looked up a few of them.

I would like to quote ,“don’t let the small minds around you fool you into believing that your goals are too big to reach”,  I dont know who said this, but think about the countless occasions where we have taken a lesser path just because someone told you that the other path was too difficult.

Why compare myself to pi?

I would say don’t, because this is just an analogy of what the world looks at you and thinks about you after having their share of experiences to judge you. Yes pi is definitely irrational, and may be i am also irrational, that does not mean that you start comparing.

Each thought has a special place in a person’s life. We define what we term as rational and what we don’t. Yes sometimes i irritate others in my class by asking too many doubts. I regret to inform you that i too would have felt the same way if i was in your place, but the truth is that i am not.

I am different, i cant keep some doubts just rambling up there in my head as the lecture in class goes on. There is a tremendous sense of satisfactions every time my teachers attempt to solve my doubts and I have got to say that they are getting a very good hang of it (^_~).

There is a very old movie named “Pi” some of you reading this might have seen the movie. It is about about the life of a genius who gets to know the secrets of pi, how ever the technology has moved much beyond just an IC and today we have technology that make it hard for us to believe how life was back then.

March 14^th, which happens to be my friend ashwin’s birthday, is internationally “pi day 3:14”, lol, but it's also Albert Einstein's birthday (^_^). Yes i have used Pi’s fame to attract audience to my blog and i wish to owe all this credit to pi, thank you.

Is truth an opinion?

Is truth just an opinion?

You might know the story of the 5 blind men and the elephant, where each person tells what he observed to the other and it turns out that they all are wrong in reality.

We come across several incidents in day to day life, and while we have our point of view, truth happens to underly reality. To be more clear, just as the saying goes, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, truth too has a framework of its own. Each person observes different things in his life, and it is the occurrence of this duality that makes us question truth.

So lets try to look at a link connecting opinion and truth.

We say seeing is believing. But in reality, truth tends to have its own limitations. This is exactly where religion fails. Each religion preaches some beliefs depending on the person who initially perceived it with his 5 senses. But when attempted to put the different views from different people together, we turn up with something that we turn up in the story of the “5 blind men and the elephant”, the resulting entity is nothing close to an elephant.

Sometimes truth changes over time. For example, the flat model of the earth and the theories like the geocentric theories have prevailed in society we had mathematically consistent models of motion and time. It took a change in mindset to accept that the earth is indeed round and of course the heliocentric theory and now we have bent the math around what we now believe as the truth. 

How truth is different from belief:

Most of us believe whatever we know as the truth. This kind of a mechanism helps us survive as individuals, because, if we really had to find out the truth all by ourselves, there would not be any time for the more important things in our lives. 

For instance we believe our parents that they really are our parents. We believe that our name is so and so and continue with that. We believe that the world was here before we were born and will continue after we are gone

When a teacher says things like electricity and magnetism, we believe our teachers, even though none of these phenomenon have been completely understood. We believe in mathematics and things like elementary particles and string theory even tough in reality we don’t have contemporary analogies. For that reason, we tend to rely on analogies more than reality while understanding the mechanism of most phenomenon (misuse of vocabulary).

As children we are taught to speak the truth and from experience we learn that good morals are indeed a pre-requisite for a good way of life. However some situations lead us to question the fundamental principles and when we don’t find answers to such situations, we tend to come up with our own ideas on what might have happened. At his point we see that truth can be made up just as easily as an opinion.

This is it true that truth is just an opinion?

No. Like most human behaviour, truth too is assimilated with a negative feedback attitude. We perform different experiments in real life which tells us how to react to different situations we come across, as we learn we label different things as true depending on reliability of the argument. Whereas opinion is just what we think at one specific moment in our lives. In a broader sense, opinions are the way we reach the truth or what we tend to conclude as the truth.

Does it really matter?

No. Like I initially argued, it does not matter, because whatever happens in reality we each find explanations and try to move on. We are so good at modeling things with mathematics that when we find mathematics showing results on extrapolation, we tend to come up with realities based on our observations; take string theory, chaos theory, extra dimensions for instance, where mathematics expalins everything perfectly but we are limited by our sense.

It is a common opinion that proverbs are universally applicable. However there are several proverbs which contradict each other! this clearly helps us to distinguish beliefs, opinion, truth and fact.

Do Exams Matter

Do Exams Matter?

I am going to start with a Yes for the time being, and as the page turns, different ideas will be discussed. The exam mentioned here refers to academic exams.

Yes, exams do matter for a number of reasons. As far as education system is concerned, to be consistent with the rest of the class, exams are conducted with a common syllabus in mind to check if a student has grasped the essential contents of the subject.

An exam helps a student make a self estimate of his knowledge in the subject. It gives a student a goal, without which he might as well spend his time reading random stuff for knowledge. It helps teachers analyze their teachings in class, and make appropriate changes in their future lectures and standard mark with which academics can be measured.

However, exams only represent the on spot knowledge presented by a student in an exam hall, and not the over-all knowledge of the student itself. Most content that appears in an exam has to be covered in the class and exams should not contain out of the blue seeming topics (which is unfortunately, these days a quite common practice in most engineering colleges). Students must be challenged based on what is taught, and not on what the lecturer considers difficult to understand. It is also fundamentally wrong to expect every student to be a copy of Albert Einstein!!!

Though the fear of failure is a motivational drive for last minute studying students, it forms a definite goal for students who aim at topping the subject, because, in order to top an exam, the student tries to cover the entire syllabus well before the exam and this aspect alone can be the drive to gain more knowledge.

Scholarships and fee reduction for academically excelling students’ forms another motivational aspect while studying a particular subject.

How much do exam matter?

The answer to this question is purely dependent on an individual and depends on the scenario, on the individual’s motives and priorities in life. Additionally it also depends on an individual’s life experiences so this matter will not be addressed directly.

Before: an exam, it is the duty of the individual to make sure that he knows why he is writing an exam and has to know the syllabus of the exam. Make sure you study with an attitude of learning all that is recommended and aim for the top place.

During: an exam it is in the best interest of the student to be equipped with knowledge as well as accessories required for the exam. Punctuality for examination and carrying a wrist watch is recommended to make sure that the best use of the allotted time is made. For good recollection during an exam, a student has to make sure that he has reserved some time for a last minute revision just before the exam. And maintained all the required content of the exam in a well accessible format.

After: an exam the general tendency is to expect a very good result, regardless of the performance. However, ideally, it is best to get rid of all expectations and move on with another activity till the results arrive.

Effects of exam stress:

Exam stress can have several effects such as sleep deprival, nightmares, tension, under-esteem, lack of confidence, lack of concentration, poor recollection and other health issues.

Why are exams feared so much?

As children, parents tend to judge students based on their marks, and tend to compare with other children of that age or with a sibling. This is a very wrong practice and affects the students way of thinking as a whole.

Though failure at an exam is on top of the list of fears, the real fear of exam arises due to lack of effective preparation for the corresponding exam.

And the worst part is that the results of an exam is feared more than the exam itself. 

Experience:

During school, i have never been forced to study, and neither had i done very well in academics, I used to talk a lot and get punished regularly and did not know the importance of education. How ever much much later i began performing well and found out that if your grades are good enough, the other person usually gets the blame of talking. So I advice study you to study well, there are several little benefits apart from the major ones like job selections and scholarships and gold medals.

My advice:

Prepare well when you have time, because no one knows how tomorrow is going to be. It is better to start sharpening the sword during peace, rather than after a battle has begun, as an old story says.

Why Resistance halfens in parallel

Why Resistance halfens in parallel

A resistor offers resistance offers resistance to current. I have used the parallel resistance formula to solve an enormous number of problems in my B.E course on Electronics and Communication. However this question did not strike me back then; If a resistor offers a resistance R then why do 2 resistors in parallel offer lesser resistance? This question did not appeal to us probably because in most courses, resistors are learnt after capacitors and while learning, the teacher says that the two formulas (Resistors in series and capacitors in parallel) are similar and we buy it, and start applying it.

I was sitting in Udupi bus-stand waiting for my bus to Bangalore when this question struck me and it took some time for me to get the answers that night. I first tried approaching the problem in terms of the material used for the resistors, which according to me were both the same so it would not generally matter.

We learn in electronics that a voltage source appears to behave like a tank of water maintained at some potential.  The resistors in this case act like a pipe, whose diameter restricts the flow of water from the pipe to the ground.  So if 2 pipes are connected in parallel, then each pipe would still continue to offer the same resistance to the flow of water but would convey twice the amount of water to the other end. This realization was the key in understanding how resistors also appear to offer only half the amount of resistance to current in an electrical circuit. This can also be thought of as the cases where the two pipes are replaced by one thicker pipe to offers an equallent reduction in resistance.

In the case of Series circuits, however, the pipe would now be twice as long and the distance the water needs to flow doubles and hence the resistance offered by the effective pipe-chain, is twice as much. Hence resistors in series offer double the resistance.

This basic principle can be extended to any number of pipes in series or parallel and hence in resistors as well.

When I discussed this with my friend Ashish in Bangalore, he gave me his own point of view which was that each resistor continued to send the same amount of current across the circuit and hence the doubling of current meant a halfening of resistor value.

We can also look at the problem like a road. If there are parallel roads or one road with several lanes then the traffic can move faster and hence offers less resistance to movement. And if there is just one lane, then the traffic will be clogged and acts as series resistance.

To conclude, the behavior of resistors, pipes, traffic can be analyzed on similar grounds and it is important to know the significance, even though we can manage most situations in life continuing to be ignorant.

Note: We find a similar behavior in all places where networks are involved, such as human body circulatory system, water supply channels, road networks, truss networks, electrical networks, spider web, internet, structure of birds nest, etc. How ever I don't think it is necessary to discuss any of them in detail in this post.

Significance of time

Significance of time

Time is one of the most influencing factors in a person’s life. When a man is depressed, all he wishes is some time (/away) from his dear ones.  I remember a message on the importance of time.

•   The guy had to repeat an year in education knows the importance of 1Year
•      The guy who is about to write an exam in one hour knows the importance of 1 hours.
•  The guy writing the exam knows the importance of 1 minute.
•   The guy who just missed an accident knows the importance of 1 second.

We are perhaps the only beings that know what time is, we have analyzed time and derived some important conclusions, some of which are, "Time waits for no one", time lost cannot be regained. “Time and tide wait for none”. Some believe time is money, while to be a teacher, while there are others who believe that time is God.

Time is measured in millennia, century, decade, year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second, millisecond depending on what it stands to represent. Measuring time accurately has been one of the most challenging tasks ventured by mankind, despite the common belief that time is eternal.

Being on time. Completing a work in time. These two sentences clearly let us know the significance of time as a guiding mechanism.

We are more interested on how much time is remaining when we are transferring a file to another device from our computer or downloading a file from the internet.

People spend a lot of money just to save time. When a work is given to an employee, his salary indirectly reflects the amount of time he has saved to the company.

People take appointments to meet each other, especially medical specialist (doctors, surgeons, dentists). When people decide to meet after a long time, they fix on a time and a place.

We all live by 2 internationally followed time references

1) The B. C. (the birth of Christ)

2) The Greenwich meridian (for global time synchronization)

People tend to quote “Those were some of the best times” or say: “those were the days” when they refer to their past.

Past,  present and future are separations made by time.

Make good use of whatever time you get. Yes we tend to say that we are bored during nothing, It is not a bad idea to join a training course during the holidays if you know what training course is apt for you.

Students need to make good use of the available time during the day. It is very important to make sure you get enough sleep because health can degrade over time if sufficient sleep is not provided to the human body.

Fruits and vegetables rot over time. Animals become extinct over time and new species evolve. Time governs motion, heat dissipation, luminosity, diffusion of fragrance and colour. Glaciers melt and continents move over time. But what puzzles me the most about time is how, everything happens simultaneously in the universe. How ever mysteriously, subject syllabus varies very less (I have studied the same thing in engineering which my uncle once had (^_^) ).

Worship your time and respect others’ time.

Timing is very important for a joke to be successful. It is very important to make the right strategic move at the right time in a game of chess; or cricket for that matter. Well-timed scenes from movies win the hearts of millions, and can make the difference between a flop and a hit.

When it comes to business, it is very important to make decisions as to when a product is to be released and when an ad needs to appear on television to get a good customer response.

Causality dictates that the current state of the universe has been reached because of the series of events over time since the big bang. This might seem to explain everything; however there is more a role of chaos and uncertainty that makes it unjustifiable to make accurate predictions about future events.

Accurate Time measurements have been a very big goal in the past, where sun-dials, position of sun, moon, stars and observation of surroundings and animal behaviour patterns were relied upon to come to a conclusion about time. However it was not until the quartz clock and the Modern GPS that time accuracy could be standardized and verified worldwide.

Time is also a great conversations starting topic. When I have to chat to some unknown person on facebook, I start with a “what time is it over there?” Even in situations where you need to talk to some unknown person like say in a Bus you can use time as an excuse. And phrasing the question right can again help you have a wonderful conversation- ask a person “what is time?” (Purposefully leaving out the “the”) and you’ll either end up getting corrected or you’ll have a wonderful insight into the spiritual perspective of time! :P

It is a very common opinion that we are slaves of time. We tend to follow certain routine in our day to day lives to which we get acquainted to and find it hard to give up. For a person who gets up at 6 in the morning from a very early age it is difficult to suddenly adjust to getting up at 8 it might as well be the other way round. Eating, sleeping habits tend to form around time. The notion of being slaves to times probably comes from the fact that wrist watches somewhat look like chain armlets.

Time is a reality. Time is relative. Time is retrospective. Time is round. Ha ha ha ha, this is what time can do when you put your mind to something.

There are several movies which are centred on time. “The time machine” tells us how events are related in time. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons” tells a lot about time however this article is not the right place to discuss it. However to mention a few:

               1) The commemoration of the veterans with the reversed clock

               2) The reverse ageing of Benjamin Buttons

               3) The sequence of events that happen right on time leading to the accident

Time is often learnt referring to calendars and wrist watches these two are now accessible in mobile phones which may eventually lead to their extinctions.

Time has been the fascination of several leagues of mathematicians and scientists. It was in fact the accurate prediction of one of the results of solar eclipse, which first introduced Albert Einstein to the world. Time is one of the best teachers. Time teaches us that there is limit to everything achievable because our time itself is limited.

Many organizations and institutions have a time-tables and deadlines to ensure that a certain objective can be reached within a certain amount of time.

Different civilizations have had different units of measuring time. For instance, several civilizations had the 365 day cycle in an year. In India the Panchanga is a book that not only serves as a calender but also stands reference to astrological predictions. The Sun-dial, the hour-glass are some of the other famous time measurement inventions.


I have already spoken enough about time machines in my post "Eccentric's view into the reality of the time machine". However time has its own rules and don't be detered when something goes wrong in life. Take your own time in making decisions and make sure you get the best out of your time on earth.

Time in my life:

I have spent 4 hours of every day travelling between college and home in Bangalore during my engineering days. Though it might look insignificant, (24 – 8 (sleep) – 8.5 (college hours {8 – 4:30}) – 4  (travel) – 1.5 (morning to get ready) – 1 (relax from the travel)) which left me with 1 hour to myself at the end of the day, and my mom used to wonder why I was scoring average marks in during my Engineering life.

Sometimes all it takes is just a little more of time and effort to achieve what we want, while sometimes its just a waste of time. - Ganesh Kamath


Time matters a lot. The Round Trip Time is a measure of bandwidth and congestion in a computer network. Turn Around Time and Waiting Time are measures of performance of Operating Systems. Time to live decides the life time of a packet. Time to Market a product also matters a lot in industry and can make a difference of profit and loss.


Most Fairy tales begin with "Long ago in a distant land", Star Wars begins with "A Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."


There was a time when i wondered, 'What if the time of the universe runs out one day', but then there was no one to discuss this with and I present this to you today.


In South Canara, if you ask some one the distance between two places, they tell you the time instead. This is because, the highways here have very less traffic and they know that vehicles generally take the same time over a period, regardless of influencing factors. However, the same cannot be said about Bangalore.


When it comes to making a new World Record, it is usually a matter of milliseconds when it comes to Olympic records. However almost all records have a time factor.