Time Complexity

For those of you who don't know what it means...in algorithms, it is used to find the upper bound on the running time of a set of operations, by looking at how much each operation takes to complete.

Today, I was really trying hard to study for my qualifiers, which are in about less than a months time. Now, this is all after 2 months of really casual preparation for perhaps one of the most important exam of my life. So I started studying at around 10 in the morning. I was reading the chapter "Graph algorithms". I had taken a math course in spring 2010- Combinatorics and Graph theory. The reason I took that course was because  I thought it would be useful to me in my Ph.D. It didn't quite turn out to be as I expected it to be. Nevertheless, I was somehow happy to be back in school and taking courses. I was doing research as well which really excited me. I somehow liked that spring semester. I kinda miss it now. I wanted to be good in combinatorics by the end of it, Damn! it turned out bad. I still can't do it properly.

Hmm...Summer has been really hot. So hot, that it feels as if the sun is really angry at me for not being in the lab or at home doing something useful. May was good though, even though it was hot. I had lots and lots of ice cream. I never knew I enjoyed ice cream so much. Had fun. Sitting by the water in Meramec springs was really worth while, I really enjoyed it. I wanna go there again. Play with the water. Saw that when you splash water, you can see water droplets float 'on' water; reason--high surface tension. Then they break eventually.

One day, I was sitting in front of my house and I saw a spider build its web from scratch. Fascinating to see how good it was in keeping the same distance from one strand to the other. I kinda envied it. It had no exams to prove its merit against. If it failed, it would learn from its life's mistakes, because, if it can't prey, its going to die. So it has to be better. Intellectual evolution.

All this with the song "Khaabon ke parinde" playing in my head in an infinite loop.

Then, I heard the sound of the drill bit from the adjacent room. Time was now 12:30 pm. I realized I wasted about 2 and a half hours!!!! Time I can't get back. So, I told myself, "OK! have lunch and come back and study".

I got up from my desk...went to Vimal's, chit chatted for a while, invited him over to my place for sweets. On the way, we decided to go to his place for Dosa by flipping a coin to simulate a random walk. We did, but it was short lived. We decided against it and walked to my home :) had sweets and left to his place. We spat on statistics' face by doing so and it got back to us, we got held up with something and more time was wasted. So, we had dosa, which was really good. Then I felt so sleepy, I came home and slept for about an hour. After I woke up, I told myself, OK! study until late in the night. Went to library. Came home, made tea. Cooked. Told myself-- "OK! Eat and go to the lab and study!"... So I went to the lab. Studied for 10 minutes. Couldn't concentrate. Got up. Went out, walked alone. Came back to the lab. Took my bag and told myself. "OK! go home and study". I'd been browsing since then, chatted with my friend and now I've been writing a blog!! and its 1 am. Man, i'm addicted to internet. Vimal! internet is equally dangerous. It can also drive a person crazy. And, just now I told myself, "OK! don't waste time tomorrow" :D

So you see, terrible algorithm, terrible preparation. Very very high time complexity to finish ONE chapter. Bad. Phail! Ek dun Phail! Bahut hee kharaab. Yeh ek din mein karna tha!

So..."OK! go to sleep and get up early" :)

Cheers,
Brijesh

Practicality and Hope - My Perspective

Chapter I - The philosophical approach

Life treats us in exactly the same way we let it treat us; consciously or otherwise - Brijesh [I know..I know :D]

First among the three blogs I have been itching to write for a long time. This one is a result of the transformation I have undergone as a person. It reflects how significantly my thinking has changed and how much of it still fears to change. Like most people, I have my own take on things, in other words my own philosophy towards life. As philosophy is the super set of a plethora of ideologies, I find myself constantly at loggerheads with my own take on life and the way I live it.


I've had this blog saved as a draft for over a year and a half now, I've made many changes, partly because I wasn't sure about certain things, but mostly because I couldn't figure out a way to put my thoughts into words.

So of the three things that influence our lives most, this blog is dedicated to Philosophy. Science and philosophy have to coexist for growth. Religion is the prophesied child of philosophy. A gift to our revered intellect. It was supposed to 'enlighten us'. A gift to help us grow. Unfortunately, we couldn't handle it and looked at it as a path to be powerful in society; as a source of dominance. As a result, what should have brought us peace and growth, bound us for centuries together in relative darkness. We tainted religion because we never understood the true meaning of it.

If you consider fire to be human intellect, philosophy/religion was supposed to be the fuel. Instead of using it as a torch, those who had access to it, started using it as a weapon to threaten others into submission and fuel hatred. If we think about it seriously, over the last two millenia, religion has brought us largely (and its a very large 'largely') hatred, indifference and biased opinions about other people. To a great extant, it has suppressed growth. I'm not saying it hasn't done us any good. It has. I has given hope to many people. Unfortunately, that hope turned into a sort of excuse to perform below our potential. Hope is indirectly a reason people go into depression (which generally arises from being unable to achieve something). Here is where GOD comes into the picture. The idea of God was created as our reference to all things good. It is a state of being which every person can achieve. But we don't. Why?, because we bank our progress on hope. If you were a 'i-make-my-own-life' sort of a person(a morally and ethically sound one at that) then this is your equation for success.
Success = (Hard work + Attitude = 90%) + (Luck =10%)
Now, if you are a hopeful person who has escapist attitude and tries to give excuses for failures, your equation for success would be
Success= (Hard work + God's grace= 90%) + (Luck =10%). If you see the difference, you can clearly say that you lose attitude. And to me attitude defines a person!

I'm not challenging you to be an atheist or an agnostic. I'm just asking you to be bold enough to take charge of your life. It's you who either make or break it. Be less dependent on god. Hope less and act more. In the process, lets not shun our cultural heritages. Cultures have become part of our identity. Without culture, life will be dull and colorless. But I hope there is a day when we look at religion from a completely different angle and look at 'God' and say 'Yeah..I can be like that. I will be.' I hope religion, castes and blind beliefs don't bind us from experiencing bliss.

On a personal level, I hope I don't lose something I've grown to hold close to my heart because of such beliefs.

26Cheers

Character, Self Belief and Attitude -- OUR IDENTITY

For starters-- I HATE hypocrites..I CANNOT tell how much I hate them. But, if we look closely, we all are at times (to always depending on people) hypocrites no matter how hard we try not to be. The guts to accept our faults and make honest attempts to correct ourselves defines who we really are. To me that is THE attitude which defines us and shapes our lives. We can have a peaceful sleep only with a clear conscience. No matter how successful we are, success without a clear conscience is futile. And I strongly believe success is not the only measure in judging a person.

Many of us are not born with such an attitude. Our conscious effort to develop one such establishes our character; something that we can proudly associate with until our death. The best part is, attitude is contagious. The worst part is we don't realize it. Once we develop such an attitude, the only thing left is self belief; and the two biggest hurdles in our path are our fear of failure and escapism. Its like a cycle. If we lack self belief, we have failed even before we started. Once we start failing, we lose courage and develop a fear of failure. This fear of failure breeds an escapist approach to satiate our ego. As a result of our failures we try to avoid identifying ourselves with our failures (which are a very important part of our personality development). We slowly disassociate ourselves with our TRUE IDENTITY. We then try to be successful to redeem ourselves. Slowly, but surely, our notion of wrong and right fade and 'by any means' seems to appear acceptable to 'achieve means'. This is when we have truly lost ourselves.

Why all this??....In our world where success is measured by how fat our pay cheque is, there are millions of people who have lesser opportunities to lead a 'materialistically' comfortable life as compared to us. We crib about a lot of distractions, which, from someone else's perspective relate to nothing they have to endure on a day to day basis.

Lets just think about it when we crib about something the next time. Lets put a stop to escapism. Lets be successful, but with conscience and honesty. With belief and largely unblemished character. Lets identify ourselves with PURE AWESOMENESS.


26 Cheers