Morning bicycle ride

Today I did ride my bicycle for around 10 kms, how ? Because I didn't get off my bike for more than 1 hrs and 15 minute and so going by average speed of bicycle it should measure up to my estimate. I started around 5:07 am in the morning and finished around 6:23 am. As always it was fun riding in the morning. Over campus lake and golf field there was a mist around 2 meters high and it was beautiful. Next time I will take my camera along to capture that beautiful morning time. I also went out to take a look at saluki hall to see if I should consider shifting there. The place is ok, but I don't think so I will be shifting there, its just too small.

Yesterday in one of my reading I read about the Israel's ethnic group. Israel is one of the highly developed economy and the main reason it became a nations so that all the Jews can gather at one place. However all Israel's are not Jews of same type. There are modern Jews and orthodox Jews, besides there are also Russian Jews who emigrated in masses from former USSR and even Arab Israel's.

String Theory

I recently watched this interesting documentary on String Theory. It is now proposed as a "Theory of all theory".
The reason it has gained acceptance is because of its mathematical clarity. Initially there were like 5 different versions of string theory and it was explained with 10 dimensions. Later in 1995 another dimension was added and all different versions were proved to be same in a conference at Southern California and this unification is actually called M Theory. Though no one is sure what M stands for.This has breathed new life into otherwise not so popular theory in its fledgling years.
The disputant of this theory usually argue this theory by saying that there is no way to verify this theory. Because what thing theory assumes is that the proton and neutrons are actually made up of very very tiny strings of vibrating energy, which is not observable. So in a way string theory claims that all things are made up of energy. Which kind of now appeal to spiritual people also that all things are just energy. The string theory at present no more confides to just strands of energy
String theory has brought new ideas of existence of Parallel universe, Verification of Big Bang theory, Graviton particles and S particles and the scientists now at Fermi lab are busy finding the Graviton particles which they believe will be release in fast collision of subatomic particles. graviton are believed to be circular strings of vibrating energy. The race is on to how discover these first. Competing scientists at CERN laboratories are building another particle accelerator near the border of France and Switzerland which is billed to be 7 times better than one at Fermi labs. So its a wonderful point in history of mankind that we are standing close to a remarkable breakthrough in understanding of our universe. Will string theory be the answer ? lets hope it is.

Exam tomorrow and some quick review

Got an exam tomorrow for statistics and I should be going back to study. This is on Chapter 6,7 and 8 and it will cover things like Methods of Distribution function, Order Statistics, Sampling distribution and Central limit theorem, Estimation.

Some definitions
Estimation
E(theta_hat) = theta then we call it an unbiased estimator
Order Statistics
This comes into play when we are talking about ordering of Random variables. For example if we have random variables like Y1, Y2,>.. Yn and suppose Y3 can take the largest number of values then Y3 is the max and it is denoted by Y(n), similarly now you can guess the smallest random variable will be christened as Y(1) and all others in between.
Distribution function
From a given Distribution function we can generate different functions and here the method of distributions come in handy for example. There are mainly 3 different types of method including
1. Distribution function method
2. Transformation function method
3. Method of moment generating functions

There is one more called Multivariable Transformations Using Jacobians
I would like to comment on the method of moment generating method.
Moment generating function is E(exp^(Y*t)) which has close relation to E(Y)
By differentiating m(t) = E(exp^(Y*t)) and substituting t = 0 one can get different value of E(Y^n). Thus to find the value of E(Y^3) all one needs to do is differentiate m(t), 3 times and substitute t = 0. With moment's one can easily find Variance which is usually describe as
V(Y) = E(Y^2) - (E(Y))^2
all one needs to do is find the moment of the function.
Some common moments should be remember
like for
Poisson Distribution exp(lambda*(exp(t)-1))
Normal Distribution exp(mu*t+ (t^2+sigma^2)/2)
GammaDistribution 1/(1-Beta*t)^(sigma)
Binomial Distribution (p*exp(t)+q)^n
it helps to remember and recognize these distributions. Because they are not only easy to remember they can also help in finding out other distributions.
For example the moment of Z = Y-mu is exp(t^2*sigma^2/2) and the moment of Z = (Y-mu)/sigma is exp(t^2/2). One very important result to know and derive is that moment of Z^2 is a Chi-Square distribution.
A note on Gamma Distribution should be interesting here as there are two more distributions Exponential and Chi square are speical case of Gamma Distribution. The Beta distribution is different than Gamma Distribution and it moment doesn't exist in close form.

Hot hot Carbondale

While this has been the hottest summer so far I have experienced in US. The last two summers were lot milder. Currently from where I see a lot of computers are down and there is a note on each of these monitors saying "Down due to Heat". Lol computers feeling the heat. I have two more weeks to go before this semester comes to end. Its a good semester, I learned lot more statistics than I previously known. I learned about both continious and discrete distributions. I learned about Beta, Gamma, Poisson, Normal, Geometric, Binomial distributions. The poisson distribution is very similar to Binomial distribution. The Binomial distribution can be modeled as Normal distribution.

Crotchet

Today we learn this new word "Crotchet".
Dictionary.com gives the following meanings

An odd, whimsical, or stubborn notion.
Music. See quarter note.
Obsolete. A small hook or hooklike structure.

Bartelby.com gave

The needlework called crochet (pronounced kro-SHAI) was once spelled both crotchet (now obsolete) and its present crochet, and the intricate stitches of crochet were once called crotchets too. Now crotchet (pronounced KRAH-chit) means “a quirk or idiosyncrasy, an eccentricity,” and the adjective simply describes someone full of such eccentricities and therefore peevish and difficult to get on with. Apparently most of the problems involve misspelling the eccentricity as crochet.

That is I think a better definition. I remember my mom once sewed me a crotchet hat. It was maroon color and the pronunciation I learnt was Kro-shai, which is correct too.

Increasing space in hotmail account

This is for those people whose hotmail account is still 2Mb. To upgrade to 250 Mb is pretty easy. Change your location to US or other countries like Japan and then close your account and again reopen it. You will have 250 Mb of space next day.

Not an Otiose Word

Otiose means
Useless; serving no real purpose and, therefore, ineffective; as, otiose bureaucratic regulations. Latin otiosus (at leisure).

Dictionary.com gave
Otiose is from Latin otiosus, "idle, at leisure," from otium, "leisure."

Google search gave

Otiose is afterall not an otiose word. The word means useless. For ex I can coin a sentence as
Many times, the once thought otiose theories have become the foundation of great development. Even learning otiose words does expand your mind, because each time you learn a new word you are forcing yourself to think about it and expanding your mental faculty. Here is another one "When you are launching a space shuttle every gm of payload costs exorbitantly, so the designers have to be extremely careful about the weight and weed out any otiose payload thing they can find.

Mao, China, Wangjianshuo, Fundamentalist

I am surprised if the Maoist people in Nepal really know about the Mao Ze Dong. As they call themselves Maoist. To most people who know about Mao its funny that there could be people whose ideology is based on Maoist vision. I didn't know about Mao until recently. I thought he was like Deng Xio Pian. One of my Professor was in China at the infamous Tinanemen Square time and has seen china developing first hand. Mao was a dictator but he was not a visionary. He was responsible for the 5 yr plan things and the very first was a disaster. Even the second one was also a disaster. In his era 1959-61 there was one of the worst famine occurred in China and it led to more than 25 to 30 million more deaths then due to natural cause in China. The communist party has always been secretive of its activities. He divided the people in the communiums. People who were the member of communist party enjoyed while other suffered. The real hero of Chinese economy is Deng Xio Peng. He was the one who led China to a new era not the Mao ZeDong. Mao was also responsible for the Cultural Revolution in China and it was a failure. I still remember watching the movie Xiu Xiu the sent down girl, how young people were forced to abandon their parents and work in remote parts of the country and got exploited by the communist party members only those who had connection stayed back the ordinary people couldn't. Cultural revolution exploited juveniles. They were given power to malign anybody who spoke against Mao. The interesting part is that Mao was shrewd enough to have people under 20 as his cadre.
I love reading this blog of Wangjianshuo a Shanghai native and his recent experience of registering his blog with the government. He had to furnish all details including his mobile phone so that he could be contacted if the need arises, otherwise there is a huge penalty. I wonder than how people like Ali Sina of www.Faithfreedom.org can survive in China. Isn't it curbing what people wants to say ? After all internet is the biggest democracy. We form our opinion about other people based on what we read, see and hear. There are now growing number of people who are interacting with other people due to globalization, advances in communication and transportation. To me a threat of world war IV is over. However the thing which intrigues me and most people is what will happen to fight against terrorism ? America is now sucked up deep into Iraq and Afghanistan conflict. India is already occupied with Kashmir problem and there is now Thailand also drawn into this war against Islamic extremist. The recent explosion in London is a sign that they have power to strike anywhere. Infact it shouldn't come as a surprise and I am always amazed when people say that police is not doing their job when such things happen or a security breach occurred, the point its almost next to impossible to stop terror activities by policing alone.

The main point is the organized religions are becoming more and more intolerant. For example as a Hindu by religion there are so many Hindu organizations who get infuriated everyday for all kinds of stuff which I am least bothered and they claim to represent me, while I don't endorse their views. For example there in fashion someone used Om on Thong and they said all Hindus are enraged. Similarly someone used photo of Ram on shoe and Hindus got enraged. I have a funny idea these people should be told whenever they are making such audacious statements first they get signatures of all people who are enraged. I am sure if such a law is passed these religious zealots will have to find some other work to support themselves. So that is one reason that is driving so many people to claim that they are either agnostic or spiritual but not religious.

Rok sakey to rok lo

After watching Rok sakey to rok lo my advice will be if you can rok sakey to rok lo from seeing this movie. Why do the people who made this film were thinking who made this movie. Its the same old story of an elite school rivalry with a junta school. The hero ofcourse is always rediculed by the elitist and he emerges winner in the end by overcoming all possible odds. Hadn't we seen this in Jo jeeta wohi sikander and countless other movies and on top of that the story just drags. The last marathon scence is a pain to watch. Every body is so biased for our hero whose character hasn't been carved out well and a really shady direction which makes you wonder what on the earth is these guys thinking when making this movie. Thumbs down my friend this movie is average. If you just want to have a ton of laugh watch the choreography in which Sunny deol and his entourage are dancing. I had cramps in my stomach laughing and again now when I am recalling this to write a review for it. Must watch that dance sequence if you cannot rok sakey yourself from watching this crappy movie.

Firework in Carbondale, Here is Sailesh, Sumant and Mitsu who went out to see the display near Arena. 

India needs Broad band

Why people like Dayanand Maran and all don't really understand that getting affordable broad band connection can revolutionize the economy. There should be no cap on the amount of data you can download and the prices for computer should be subsidized. Its that simple and so with the cell phones. Even though at the time of writing this cell phone users in India are around 50 million, what we should have aimed for is around 300 millions. Get these phones at dirt cheap price and computers to the masses. Once they start using it, they will develop business around it and the corresponding return to economy will be far in access to the initial investment in subsidizing these engines of growth. The percentage of people depending on Agriculture will decrease. Though its good to know that agriculture contributes now only 25 percent to GDP it still employees around 60 percent of labour force. Other thing that needs to be done is to have roads and more railway tracks to be laid. Electricity to be produced. Why can't we have a solid energy policy utilizing wind power ? I mean especially for homes in Metro city people will be willing to pay more for electricity that is reliable and uninterrupted. I am convinced about the future of wind power for India with a huge coastal line and a desert area. Why not utilize it for Wind , Solar and other renewable source of energy. It absolutely makes no sense to keep waiting, the technology is already mature enough. If any country has to develop it needs to have surplus electricity. One doesn't need to invest much in people and we can contain all ills if we can have surplus electricity.

Could Sex and City be the solutions to overcoming problems ??

Well all over the developing (read low literacy) and Islamic world, the fertility rate is still more than 2.1. The Asian parents craving for boys is not to do with particularly liking for boys its more to do with difficulty in raising girl child. It should be noted that higher promiscuous society are more likely to be developed and have less fertility rate. People in close society tend to have more children. So that's where soaps like Sex and City or Desperate house wives can come to rescue. I know some of you will say that its just another way of degeneration the old customs and rituals. Sanctity of marriage as an institution and all that crap. Well these all things are there because women are so dependent in these societies that they have no say in their sexuality. The moment they gain financial independence and the knowledge to think about themselves they tend to live longer, have fewer children and become better member of the society. It benefits both men and women. What Sex and City and Desperate House wives tell is a thinking woman who is independent and able to prioritize her need. Ofcourse these are not role models to be emulated but they set a trend for women to be more assertive and ambitious, which is what we need to have a better society. As somebody said long time back, if you teach a man you teach only a single person, if you teach a woman you teach a family.

Here Sofia is busy cooking sooper. Also seen are Matt and Jennifer. 

This is Saturday Night picture at Ambassador hall barbeque (July 2nd 2005). This was really fun party with lots of booze and sooper and yes there was suju too ! 

4th July Update, Boat dock, Palin Episode 2

Today is 4th of July and US's birthday. Last Saturday other then attending barbecue with my Korean Friends, I also went to Boat docks. Jennifer and I took a canoe. We had fun even though it capsized in the middle of the lake. Fortunately we had life jackets. The only thing I lost was my sun glasses.
Yesterday we went to Corner Diner. Its a neat restaurant with old style charm. I also finished watching the movie "Your Friends and Neighbors". Its funny movie about three couples and their lives. The other things I did was watched more of Palin's episodes on Himalayas. In the second episode he travels to India from Pakistan. There is Wagah border gate ceremony, Golden temple, Shimla and Dharmshala. This was the more detailed account of Wagah border ceremony that I have seen before. Its funny that these soldiers have to show such heightened emotions. The tour of Golden Complex is really good. I didn't know that Sikhs have no priest and Guru Granth Sahib is considered as the last guru. Which makes Sikhism perhaps the most modern religion. However like many other religions these days there are self appointed protectors and this hasn't left Sikhism untouched. Palin then take a tour through Kalka -Shimla train and then he goes to Dharamshala. A short conversation with Dalai lama follows. While Buddhism has remained the choice of most enlightened people, it seems to fall in the same trap of people spending too much time in rituals rather than appreciating and imbibing the virtues it preaches.

Himalayas, Palin, Episode 1

Wow !! Except for episode 3, I am done watching all the episodes of Himalayas. The journey begins in Pakistan, the famous train to Khyber pass. Chitral, Kalash people and polo at Shandor pass. The scenery is just mind boggling. I am always amused by people who try to find their ancestors to a place they even don't know. Kalash people think themselves to be Greek and descendants of Alexander's army. They do have some strange rituals too. Like they don't consider a menstruating woman to be clean ! However its hard for them to sustain their current way of life, with so many people wanting to get a piece of their exotic life style which hasn't yet been affected by the Islam, the state religion of Pakistan. His trip to Peshawar was also funny especially the encounter with Dentist. Watching the dangerous bull race is not so easy on eye, as the bull run amok causing injuries to both their jockeys and spectators. The conversation with Prince was lovely and candid.