BMath

कुछ ऐसे ही

2009-07-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

ऐ हमें भी मालूम हैं , कल को छोड़ के जो निकला ,
वो सुबह नई हैं |
आगे जो दिख रहा , सपनो से भरी ,
वो दुनिया नई हैं |
नयापन के नवरंग में डूबा ,
मैं ऐ भूल कैसे जाऊ ,सर छुपाने को आज भी ,
कल की धुप में जला ,
मेरा आशियाना वही हैं |

The undead dead

2008-12-27T03:58:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time gentlemen. I wonder what is everyone upto. I am putting up picture of my house. Yes, its bloody cold, I know. I just saw the picture of Chitro da two posts below. Cooking breakfast special Jeeves? :)

Life in a remote English village gives one ample time to reflect and so forth (read: Shivam is terribly bored of staring at deers and rabbits and doesn't like the fact that he can't shoot them). I am hoping Patri is having fun in Cambridge (Another village!). What is the US gang upto? And the Europe? Dada must have mastered cooking 2 mine-ute noodles by now and Kamlesh should have finetuned his utopian new-economy-principles, I guess. Its about time.

Thus finishes the random rant. Here is wishing all of you a wunnerful Christmas and a great new year. May you all live to eat Pandey's food one more time! May Jaggu with you.

Peace.

Cambridge

2008-10-31T01:57:00.000-07:00

Beautiful place! Amazing and so steeped in history! My room's location is really deadly, it on trinity street almost opposite Trinity Great Gate. Newton's room is some 30 mts away and so is Ramanujan's room. 8 people stay in my apartment including 2 profs, probably retired.
There are many events organized here to welcome freshers and one of the best is pub crawling, where you go to a pub, grab a drink or 2, and then dash off to another pub. The bigger pub crawls, like trinity's, also involves garish costumes. Was really smashing, ended up in a nightclub, saw things I had only seen on youtube before, somehow returned to my room and slept to wake up to a glorious hangover!! One of my friends was punched by another guy when he was returning to his place!!
And a welcome relief is that some trailers are open almost through the night, so no more misadventures like we had back in ISI, foraging for food from dreamland to airavatha at 2 in the night!

Chaudhuri Sahab

2008-10-05T08:39:00.001-07:00

LSE

2008-06-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

Read here!
Account of an Undergrad - first year.

Its four in the f*** in morning!

2008-06-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

A line I cribbed from Shaun of the dead!
Actually its five in the morning in nama bengalooru. And as always I turn to blogging to kill time, though this time in the BMath blog, a privilege extended to me by the madcaps I had as my seniors.
I was thinking about the piratebay thing, which most of the internet users round the globe visit more often than not, except probably in US of A, Uncle Sam being his usual hawkish self. Now piratebay is a torrent site, which allows us to download loads of stuff using some torrent client like azureus. Its based in Sweden, which has pretty lax copyright laws or maybe, pretty ok copyright laws. Piratebay has been aggressively targeted by some organizations, most famously by MPAA, which is the Motion Pictures Association of America. MPAA urged, nudged, and probably kicked asses of some Swedish ministers and got Piratebay raided, although it was up in about 3 days. Have a look at this.
MPAA claims that Piratebay is in violation of copyright laws, that what it does is stealing. Legally though this might not exactly be right, the reason being Piratebay is more like an information giver, its like you ask this fellow where you might get stolen TV's or where the gangbang's going on. You can't prosecute someone for this, atleast that's what Swedish law says.
Ethically and economically however this is a different issue. The MPAA argues that this downloading is resulting in money loss for artists (as wide as possible), that it is something that might lead to loss of jobs, lowering of budgets and lowering of incentives for movie work. This is not quite true. First, most people download movies they otherwise won't have watched in theater or would have bought a dvd of, however the movie turns out to be good many do get the dvd (this is not quite true in India, what with dvd prices high and students, who are the major downloaders, budgets low) but you can see the comments in piratebay, in which the one who is sharing the movie, recommends it. Why do people take so much time to share a movie? My guess is that apart from the fact that they expect other people to share, they also want to show a good movie to others, akin to the way I used to run around trying to show movies in the audi. Besides sometimes this sharing can also greatly advertise a movie, case in point being that of The Man from Earth. Most of the movies being shared are popular hollywood movies, which I believe are downloaded by 20-30 years olds, mostly for time pass, but not out of an irresistible need to watch movies, I mean if Piratebay wouldn't have been around, they would probably watch TV, get a social life, masturbate, whatever. Some might rent a movie, this thing though I am not sure about, ie I don't know if
people will rent a movie unless they know its good, has got good reviews or is recommended by a friend. Although people do download movies indiscriminately, I mean 150 guys downloaded The Hottie and the Nottie for heaven's sake!!
Sharing is inherent in most humans and piratebay is just a big center for sharing. Rousseau defined civilization to be all about building fences, he famously said man is born free yet everywhere is in chains! But I can hardly criticize civilization to defend something that is a product of civilization! However, it is natural for us to try and break fences, fences are quite good but too tight fencing is not what we are looking for!
The important thing is that this is sharing which is going on, not stealing. I mean if they stop it, why not stop people from lending their DVDs, cameras, books, etc to their friends?
PS- Australian Aborigines were a race of people who were pretty much without any fence, they roamed wherever they wanted, each clan was like a big family in fact they hardly differentiated between there tribe and family, and if someone refused to share his wife, he was regarded as a bad sport!! I guess Kamleshji would have fitted right in, could have become sarpanch of an aborigine village simply by sharing the right thing!
PS2- One wonderful review of The hottie and the nottie said this - Watching this film was like having a view from underneath a toilet....and watching in horror as each piece of cinematic feces after another emerged, falling horribly and inevitably towards you.

Why people blog?

2008-05-31T23:24:00.000-07:00

Nowadays the blogs seem to be replacing the Fifth estate. Indian paparazzi are more using blogs to get into the limelight rather than call a press conference and make the announcements. I am totally baffled as to why people blog. I asked one great researcher why he blogs. He 'defined' blog as a personal diary which can be accessed as long as you have access to internet(though his definition of 'definition' is pretty vague and hazy). But then, if you are really interested in penning your thoughts and ideologies, then why go online, in the days of hacking, cracking and 'phishing'?

When your credit card can be accessed and hacked using a computer, why write your thoughts, which are more valuable than mere 6 sq. inch cards?

Being a statistician, my feeling is that a personal diary is very less probable to be stolen than a blog being intruded. So why blogging?

Some Photos.

2008-05-26T11:57:00.001-07:00

Lake Michigan Surfers.

(left)Sad and lonely. :(

Human face.

Hiking/Chicago Trip.

2008-05-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today, we planned to go to Starved Rock State Park which is in Illinois(IL). We four started driving from seven in the morning as it was 3.5 hours drive from St. Louis. We reached there by 10:30, it was good light hazy weather for hiking. We had our brunch in a restaurant, it was buffet and was good, I enjoyed it. Then we left for hiking with a map, which showed 4-5 small canyons along the side of Illinois river. The river was not huge, as what I would say but it was surrounded by good mountains/hilly areas. We headed with the map and got few pictures(whose link will be posted soon(hopefully) in my album). We were lucky to get some good ones in our cameras. Then we finally walked alongside the river to the parking lot. The surprising moment came when we decided to have some good food after all that excitement in the hiking, not to mention that the hiking was really tiring as we walked for some 10 miles on those mountains and along the river. Anyways, we decided to go to Gareeb Nawaz/Usmania(in Chicago) for Biryani!!! And we left for it. We reached Usmania at 1630 hrs. got our biryanis but not before we saw the lake Michigan as we drove through the Lake Drive and near Sears Tower. Lake looked astonishing, it was beautiful and filled with surfers. As it was already 6 and given that it will take 5 hours to drive back we left Chicago(Chicago is 313 miles from St. Louis). But that was not the end of surprise, we were caught by the hail storm that was there waiting for us in the dark night, 150 miles before our destination. And we were racing @80 mph, which was both exciting and crazy. We drove past people who were mere 40 and were reluctant to speed up. Over all it was a total surprise trip which was made in few second's initiation and executed with the most excitement(if not perfection).

NY and DC trip day 1

2008-04-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's long that anyone posted some topics here. :(
So I thought I'll take the initiative to write something, cause my semester practically got over today. Last week I , together with a few friends went to visit New York and Washington. We rented a car on Sunday April 20th and headed to New York at around noon. In between we stopped to some place in Connecticut to have a small break and then we continued our journey to New York. We reached New Jersey at around 4 in the evening and checked in our Hotel. After an hour's rest we headed to New York. We were at Times Square at around 7pm. Times square was full of people even though it was a Sunday evening. The place near times square rocks. We park our car in the 7th avenue and amazingly we got free parking. :)
We walked around in times square watching the most colorful American city. Then we headed towards the Rockefeller centre . We had to walk 2 blocks to get there from times square. There is a beautiful garden in front of Rockefeller center and behind there are flags of all the countries which are decorated in white lights. Then it was the time to go to the top of the rock, on the roof of Rockefeller center. We had to stand in a huge queue before we entered the building. We went thorough a minor security check before we got in. There again we had to wait in a long queue before we could step in the high speed elevator to finally reach the top of the rock (well... at least to the 63rd floor. The elevator doesn't go to the top). We walked around there for a while before we finally took the escalator to reach the top. The view from there was fantastic. I would suggest whoever gets a chance to come to New York must go there during night for the view. It is worth your money and effort :)
At around 11 in the night, we were out in the streets of New York and surprisingly we found out that even New York sleeps as most of the shops were closed, but luckily the Burger King near our car was open. Then we drove to ground zero, to see the remnants of the world trade center. They are still trying to clear the area and it looks so sad. But they are planning to build a new world trade center in the same place by 2012.
Then we headed for the battery park to get a view of the Statue of Liberty at night. But it's actually too far from there to get a good picture. So we headed back to our hotel with the plan to visit Statue of Liberty and other places in New York on the next day.

To be continued...

Universal existence of Bathroom writers and the Economics behind it:-

2008-03-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

After visiting two continents and gathering information from the friends in almost all continents, I can assert that Zealot toilet scholars exist everywhere in the world. I will concentrate towards positive part of supposedly negative thinking. People who destroy there energy in sketching graphical description of their friends, posting mobile number of number-2 type girls and many other innovative useless things can use there intellect for the welfare of mankind. I want to stress on the reach of these bathroom scholars. It's my experience, please do not take it as a satire on those intellectual thinker. In my view, it's most recently discovered place to speak out. Around 8 months back, I have seen first slogan to boycott Beijing Olympics in the toilet of Universite Paris1 Pantheonne-Sorbonne(Tobiac Campus) just below the sketch of a nude girl.

"WE WANT FREE TIBET, BOYCOTT BEIJING OLYMPICS"

Now, Everyone is well aware of the reach of this newly discovered media. The fire which is initiated inside toilet of Paris-1 made French president bold enough to boycott starting ceremony of Olympics as he was a regular user of that toilet. A lot of Shahi clinics running their Business from the toilets. As an Economist, I will appreciate bidding for the right of pasting pamphlets in Indian toilets. It will raise a good amount to maintain ill-conditioned Indian toilets. Public toilets are most widely appreciated media to speak out your feeling, which will attract common people's attention in most effective way because while peeing people suppose to be most relax(Ref. Birbal's Theorem) in this fast paced world. It's my appeal to Indian AIDS awareness society to start their campaign from Public toilet in stead of starting it with Shilpa-Richard smooching sessions. I will emphasize on the selectivity of quality of posters. For example in our ISI toilet we can display posters having some mind-blowing, revolutionary Hypothesis.......I am want to list one of them named Safdar's Hypothesis.

Safdar's Hypothesis: There exist a simple random walk in n-manifolds and stupid B. Rajeev can not understand it.

Now, people will concentrate their mind in sketching possible path and closed formulas for simple random walk in place of designing logo of BAT-BALL tournament. So, what do you think about this mind blowing idea.............

This is one of my unpublished work as an Economist.

My experiences with Statistics

2008-02-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

My total earning from tutoring Statistics is 100 pounds now :) The topics that I have taught are:-
1) Regression
2) Hypothesis testing
3) Non - Parametric tests

I am glad that I graduated from ISI and no matter how much I have hated Statistics (and, I still do), the course-work at ISI made me learn some basics of the topic. I have the confidence to read up on stuff and manually calculate everything for my students (and I am being paid 20 pounds an hour :D And, the number of my students is rising exponentially :D :D)!

Come to think of it, who would have thought I would actually tutor Statistics and be paid for it!

Moral:- Money is a good motivation to learn Statistics :P

fuck-wit-excellente

2008-02-19T00:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a piece of conversation between me and a batch-mate of mine. This chap has been in UK since 1993. Lets just call him X for the time being.

X:- So, you are from India?
Me:- Yup [smile]!
X:- I like India.
Me:- Oh! Cool! Have you been there?
X:- Nope. Not yet.
[Pause]
X:- There are lots of Maharajas in India, no? Maharajas and Princes?
ME:- Not any more. That was before independence.
X:- [Pause] [Ponder] Do you have elephants in India?
Me:- Yeah. Loads.
X:- You guys use it as a taxi, right?
Me:- (!!??!?) errr... NO!
X:- [puzzled disbelief] But, I saw it in James Bond movie!
Me:- Thats a Goddamn movie mate! We have the same Taxis as you guys do.
X:- Oh [slightly disappointed]! Do you have snakes in India?
Me:- Yeah. In jungles.
X:- But, there are a lot of them in cities, no? They can come like-this-like-this [makes a slithering movement with hands] to the cities. And, they bite!!!
Me:- Dude! How often do you get to see snakes on the streets of London?
X:- Never seen 'em.
Me:- Precisely! Snakes hardly come to the city.
X:- But this is UK! And, THAT is India.
Me:- Oh yeah?
[I must say, I was getting amused by this guy's hopeless general knowledge. I had no idea that such exhibits managed to survive this world for 23 years and come to LSE as well]
[Awkward silence for a minute]
X:- Do you have loads of crocodiles in India?
Me:- Dude! Now you are pushing it.
X:- No! I want to go to India and swim in Ganges but I am scared of crocodiles.

I ran out of patience by then and told him I will see him later in class.

Another chick. She is British-Bangladeshi. She loves wearing loads of kajal so that she could look like Bipasha Basu (who, as she puts it, is a Bengal-tigress). Exhibit B here has also joined a facebook group titled Bangladeshi doesn't mean Bengali-Muslim, you dumb bitch!!! (note the extra exclamation marks). Fair enough. She is probably disappointed with other people's ignorance.

BUT,

she thinks that all Indians who have come to UK for the first time are "Fresh From Oven". And, everytime she looks at a male Indian postgrad or first year Indian undergrad (even those who were born and brought up in Malaysia/Australia/NZ/Hongkong) she gets a totally romantic feeling of them being village-boys. The other day she casually enquired whether the brands like Vogue and Nike existed in India. After being told that they pretty much do, she said, "But, in India, everyone is so poor!!! How do they manage?"

Well... yup. LSE is quite an interesting place to meet people.

Mission:- How to make ISI better?

2008-02-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

An evil plan, I say! Here is an outline (Kindly drop-in your suggestions) :-
1) I make loads of money.
2) Mathew and Sid also make loads of money. So do others who wish to move to jobs.
3) 10 years down the line, pool in cash and start a separate institute. Same entrance procedure. Start with only undergrad.
4) Provide better salary to lecturers. And, MUCH BETTER stipends to students.
5) Offer more flexibility to students in choosing their specialization viz pure/app maths, comp sc, stat, physics.
6) Arrange for them to receive excellent tutoring from other colleges as well , if needed.
7) Work along CMI lines and have an industry sponsored comp sc and applied maths departments (which will also ensure students have places to consider once they finish undergrad)
8) Use our contacts and encourage students to take up internships and gain work-experience.
9) Again pulling strings to place students with the best of the firms here or abroad (By that time, we probably be in a decent position in some firm ourselves - maybe partners :P)
10) It will be hard to implement it for first couple of years but once people start getting placed, the rest will fall in place. The entire motive is to provide a suitable environment to both - the ones who wish to be researchers and the once who wish to move to industry. And, a very suitable one as well!
11) I believe that our batch-mates/seniors/juniors/their contacts would be willing to join the place for we will ensure an environment conducive to fruitful research :)
11) But then we put money in it! What do we get out of it? :) It will be a totally dumb-ass move not to have a way to make more cash out of our cash. I have a plan. Somewhat. But not a good idea to put it on the blog.

So yeah! Thats a sort-of vague plan. I am sure, things will change over time. We will be able to improve on it. Maybe change a few things here and there. But this is the basic skeleton. And, I am not being altruistic. Its just a way to give students a better platform AND make money for ourselves.

3 incentives to visit Chicago!

2008-02-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys I give you three reasons to visit my place.
1) Food cooked by me.
2) Awesome tandoori dishes at Gareeb Nawaz starting from $3 a plate.
3) Cricket in a Basketball court.

The last point is reason enough to come here. We actually played this week and it's soooo fun. Occasionally there were some deranged people asking us when we would be over so they can play "Basketball". But it's fun to show them that for once their court is being used for a better reason! Huh.

Perfect Set!

2008-02-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

With the joining of Tunna, every single* BMath 04 - 07 student is now on the team of contributors to the blog. Now, all we need to do is start writing :P

Dada, kammo, Pranav:- Europe news please!
Mayank:- क्या कर रहा है बे ?
Deepak:- Stat news etc?
Deepro:- Yo bro!
Tunna:- किधर हो? ISI - D? Post stuff!
Miyan:- Opinion on quantum-mechanics-chicks in US? Hmm?

Hoping to see more posts!
Cheers!
Shivam

* - technically!

Terry Pratchett diagnosed with Alzheimer's

2008-02-06T05:54:00.000-08:00

Click here for a report.

In response, The man said:-
"I Aten't Dead Yet!"
"I shall very soon be on medication that in theory should blow some of the cobwebs away and I hope my typing speed and accuracy will improve. Meanwhile, we are in contact with various organization and researchers and keeping in touch with developments in the field, which is something of a Cinderella compared with other major illnesses."

Terry added a few extra dimension to humour and fantasy. Hail Pratchett!

Few More Generic photos!!!

2008-02-05T20:18:00.000-08:00

Chepokda @jap restaurant.

Our Tunnada®.

Unmaad - fashion show

2008-02-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

During Unmaad ( refer previous post by me ) I was doing a sponsored round in the fashion show where we had to walk around with L.G. phones....very gay yes...but one of my friends managed a halfway decent photograph.

However I want to keep on record that I still think my best ever snap is the one with the towels and bucket. hehe

Snake Video

2008-02-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

and another with the comments of our nearly favorite Prof. Muthuramalingam.

Another Intruder!!!

2008-02-05T09:27:00.000-08:00

What we could never do in ISI, this snake did, it enjoyed its food! Here are two videos guys, one with background(expert) comments of my favourite teacher Mr. GM, for whom everything was fundamental theorem of calculus(which I am realizing only now!).

PS: Another video in next post.

Unmaad

2008-02-05T01:43:00.000-08:00

Unmaad is the IIM Bangalore cultural fest. Happens once a year and this year it was arguably the biggest in India. Its been happening over the last weekend. Started Friday morning and ended at around 5:00 on Monday morning. Kept me totally busy from start to finish. There were events all day, concerts every evening and parties every night from midnight to six AM.

I tried getting our juniors to come from ISI for the fest. Chand and Suranjan said they would but, as expected, neither turned up. There we're however a lot of other people there who were VERY interesting.

One thing I figured out is that people can be VERY dumb a lot of the time. Just listen to this. I'm talking to this one girl (really cute btw) and at the same time this other guy is trying to .... hit on her?? Here's what happened.

(In attempt to generally be like a host I try to include everyone in the conversation)
(this is all happening at around 4 AM on sunday morning)

Me : So what are you guys doing?

Really cute girl : I'm doing my final year in Mount Carmels

Dumb chap : I'm in my second year in St. Josephs
(he now realizes that this would make him younger than the girl so...)

Dumb chap : But it's not like that....I actually dropped a year. So while I'm academically younger than you, I'm not actually younger than you.
(he now realizes that this would kinda make him a dumb chap so...)

Dumb chap : You know I didn't fail a year or anything....
(at this point I start sniggering and I'm fairly certain she did too)

And this is just a random example. All weekend long people have been coming up to me and saying the most inane things. One girl even tried to kill me ( minor exaggeration : assault would have been more appropriate ) because she lost the dance competition and we didn't give her a participation certificate. Seriously.....what the hell is she going to do with a certificate claiming she participated in a competition thats free for ANYONE to participate. Hell....Mayank could have taken part in that competition and we all know how he dances. ( note : really cute girl won the dance competition )

I haven't slept in ages. Managed two hrs of sleep on friday and saturday nights. Zero on sunday. I went to class at 8:30 AM monday morning...Slept there so obviously that even I was ashamed. Apparently I had my knees up on the table, my head was tilted back and I was snoring. Some of my friends even say I was drooling but I'm going to pretend that didn't happen.

Thats about it from Bangalore....If you want to know about the other side of Bangalore call the Pamily and pind out. Of course, Bohemians is always there...

P.S : Oddly enough the name of the girl I mentioned is Natasha, just like my old laptop. I've also decided that my Apple is also a Natasha, it's a nice name...

P.P.S : Where is everyone....Only few people are posting. Monkey I'm sure doesn't know how to type yet but what about the rest?

पेह्चान कौन ?

2008-02-04T11:21:00.000-08:00

दादा बन गया जेनटीलमैन :)

Good Ole Pix!

2008-02-03T15:44:00.001-08:00

Somebody teach me some Statistics

2008-01-30T23:53:00.001-08:00

My apartment building is densely filled up with beautiful girls. But, alas! The only way to impress them seems to be able to help them with their statistics assignments. If only I had paid more attention to it during B.Math days.

keeping up - lots of arbit

2008-01-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

I've been kept rather busy over the last month or so. Havent looked at this blog in ages and haven't had the chance to look at the Bohemians either. I finally managed to get some free time today which explains the sudden post.

Oddly enough, I haven't been kept busy by studies the last couple of weeks. Last weekend IIM-K turned up and the weekend before that IIM-A, both for sports meets. I, being the IIM-B swimming champion and acting captain ( :-) ) had to stay with the other team ( and stay sober ) both weekends. Needless to say, I thrashed both teams and now both shoulders hurt like crazy.

During the meet with IIM-K, things got really hairy during the basketball game (i was scorekeeper not player) and I ended up in a fight with a guy from IIM-K. It was during this time that I first realized the impact ISI had on me. Not only could I understand the Hindi curses he was yelling, but I could give back several times worse than I got. What fun that was. Luckily when he raised his fists to punch me some of my friends got in the way. I learnt to curse but never quite got the hang of whacking people.

In other news, I'm almost set for my internship....I'm just getting a few details with work permit and stuff sorted out. The only parts that are certain is that the first week, starting April 6th and the last week, ending June 10th will both be in London. The in-between two months could be in either London or New York.

In addition to this, I get the option to go on foreign exchange during my 5th term. This is totally dependant on your rank in class and as mine is near the bottom I wont get any of the American or British Business schools. However, the entire plan is for me to get to France during the 5th term (Sep, Oct, Nov) as apparently I dont need to study at all there. I'm looking forward to meeting all our French ISI junta there. If all goes well, I should be able to meet everyone in our batch (minus Mota) over the next year. (chitru better spend some money and come visit me in New York)

The only other thing left are TH concerns...after working on it for three years, its very pissing off to have it go totally crazy with the disaster duo of ISI Bangalore at the helm. Lets see how it goes...

Other batch junta should also write in this....if i get any email id's then i'll add them also to the blog. Have fun...

Bitter Cold

2008-01-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

Temperature is plunging through the night and tomorrow it's going to be -17 deg C in Chicago with 35mph wind. I am planning to stay in bed the whole day.
Here are some pics of snow.

I a m glad that I don't own a car.

This is a lake to be precise

A must see movie

2008-01-18T23:36:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Lithium I am posting my first blog (achievement eh!) .

I saw this shocking movie called "Zeitgeist". It's rather a documentary which discusses religion, the American government and central bank. Apparently unrelated topics(or uncorrelated, as you like it) . I highly recommend it to all of you.

Here's a link, do spare some time to watch. It'll be worth.

Pic!

2008-01-15T17:50:00.000-08:00

I was bored and was browsing. Found this and thought, maybe I should put it up :)
Picture courtsey, www.xkcd.com

On PhD

2008-01-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

Not much to say! We have a reputation when it comes to manufacturing mathematicians. For starters, I would suggest this link from Vipul Naik's homepage. Vipul has a very descriptive style of writing and he provides useful links as well. So, shouldn't be a problem. This page here talks about the basic stuff grad schools look for and basic details about GRE, TOEFL etc.

For a list of Unis offering PhD programs in Mathematics, click here!

For an insight into grad life, click here!

Cheers!
Shivam

On jobs in London city

2008-01-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

Certain major differences from Indian job market are:-

1) Campus presentations and NOT campus placements-
The companies come to campus only for presentations and not to recruit. All applications are made online and off-campus. Applications are judged on their merit and then applicants are invited for further rounds of selection.

2) Open market-
...that is, anyone with ANY degree can aply for ANY job. So, do not be surprised if company website mentions a profile of a geography or English literature graduate as an investment banker. As long as the applicant can convince that he/she has the required skill-set, he/she stands a good chance
As a result, the pool is immense and so competition is pretty stiff.

3) Selection process-
A standard procedure is,
Online application---> Numerical and verbal/logical test--->Telephone interview (competency based)/First round of interview---> Assessment Centre---> On rare ocassions, a final round of interview.
Do read up on assessment centres!

4) Work experience prefered
Preferably relevant! Voluntary work also respected but the applicant should be clear about what he/she has learnt from it and how is it useful for the job applied for.

5) Strict guidelines for CV and cover letter
Refer to the college's career services. Basic pointer is, i-banks--> one page CV, consultancies--> two page CV,industry-->refer to the website.

6) Extra-curriculars, team skills and leadership skills a must!
Nobody wants a geek.

7) Excellent communication skills required.

8) Apply early!
Deadlines are sharp and applications are considered on a rolling basis. So, apply early.

9) Huge salaries :)
Banks and consultancies, on an average, offer 35K Pounds basic for analyst positions. Gross might come up to 50-60K depending on the division and firm. Industries offer 25K basic.

10) Where to start?
For i-banks, here!
For a list of all companies, click here!
Refer to this for Europe's top employess.

Cheers!
Shivam

New Year Celebrations in London!

2008-01-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

Click here!
I was there with 40,000 other people. Simply breath-taking :)

On ISI and ₤$€

2008-01-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

This post is a compare-and-contrast between Indian Statistical Institute - Bangalore and The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE ≡ ₤$€).
[The writer of this post has a B-Math (Hons) degree from the former institution and hopes to have an MSc in Applicable Mathematics degree from the latter by this year end.]
The possible destinations for a B-Math student would be Masters in - Applicable Mathematics, Statistics, Risk and Stochastics, Operations Research, Operations Research (Decision Sciences). Nothing is stopping one from applying for a degree in Economics/Finance but, I think, B-Math does enough to ensure that one will not think about these options when one is applying.
I, being a Dept of Math student @ The LSE, will talk about the MSc - App. Maths course only. The details about other courses can be provided on request.
So, here goes...

To begin with, there is a lot of differences between living in Central London and living in Muthurai Nagar and, beleive-it-or-not, these factors do have an immense effect on your academic performance! So, its a bit difficult to point out all the causes, their interdependence and the overall effect. I shall point out two concrete ones:-

Standard of teaching:- Click here! The standard of teaching varies immensely over departments and within the departments. One advantage that ISI has is one can walk into a prof's room anytime and ask doubts. Here, you get one hour per week. The coursework is presented in the form of lcetures and classes. "Lecture" means the professor coming and well...lecturing! Hand-outs and assignment sheets are distributed. Be prepared to meet a guy whose accent you cant make sense of or who is too lost to pay attention to what the students are talking about. The "classes" where assignment sheets are discussed, are a platform to discuss ideas and so on. But, not very helpful. But, of course, some of the teachers are simply brilliant. So, the deal is how will one know who is good and who is not? Well... Here, you have almost a month to decide on your course. During that period, you can go and attend lectures by various professors and make up your mind, which I would say is not too bad. The only thing is, level might go down gradually as the term progresses. In fact, do not be surprised if you end up wasting one hour of your class-time learning differentiation-by-first-principle (That after you have just covered Ito-integrals in the previous lecture) The level of studets varies immensely depending on the country and background they are from.
In short, its all about what you make out of the opportunities. Make an aware decision, decide what you want from the course and degree and after that, things aren't difficult at all. (DO NOT join LSE if you wish to take up research in pure mathematics. Go to Imperial Maths Department!)

Extra-Curricular Activities:- There are a lot more opportunities to gain experience. Various student socities organize a variety of programs (from cultural shows to business games to enterprenual challenges) and its upto students to participate in them. This is one of the major deciding factors in job-selection procedure. The companies have no place for plain nerds. One has to excel in different walks and demonstrate diversity and excellence. The international student body and the diversity of opportunities that one offers are an excellent platform to learn a few improtant things like team-skills, communication-skills etc which go a long way in helping one survive in a global business scenario.

Most probably, an ISI student will have trouble adjusting for first couple of months, but, if one chooses to, one can have the time of one's life and take away certain things one is bound to miss out on having spent one's undergraduate years in an elite-yet-isolated institute like ISI. Such a role-change is definitely challenging, but, after spending one - term at this college, I would say, its worth it! And, definitely interesting as well :)

Cheers!
Shivam

Christmas Time!

2007-12-25T05:52:00.000-08:00

I went to St Paul's cathedral for midnight Christmas mass and listened to the Bishop of England furiously demeaning Science and urging the humanity to be meek and receive the Lord in them or whatever :P There were a bunch of us. If at all there was anyone at peace there, it was Sid anna! Smashed on half a bottle of whiskey, anna snored through the sermon. Haha! Typical budhu anna! Most of us snored through the sermon or admired the amazing architecture. Apparently Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married in this particular church.
Today is the X-mas day and the city has come to a standstill. No shops open! No public transport! Christmas tree and lights all over :) Time to roast the turkey and drink and be merry! We have a potluck tonight. Around 20-30 of us getting together, bringing food and will meet up, eat and then hit the streets!
AND, tomorrow is BOXING-DAY! Amazing sales all over London city. Up to 70-80% price slash! Amazing stuff and cheap :)
So the job hunt can wait! Time to forget everything and be happy :)
Wishing a Merry Christmas to all my friends and good luck to all my juniors who are applying to Universities for MSc/PhD.
Congos to Goo-rub for getting into LSE with Graduate Merit Award!

BTW, I got a 10 week internship with Barclays Capital for summer. I will be working as a risk-analyst. Its paid :)

Alrighty! Off I go to cook for tonight's bash! :D

Thanksgiving and Winter

2007-11-18T10:20:00.000-08:00

So guys, next week we'll be getting Thanksgiving holidays and the sem is also gonna end in a month or so.
What are your plans for these vacations?

Myself, I am going to my brother's place for Thanksgiving and flying to San Fransisco for winter to my sister's place.
Sister has already planned a lots of things.
They've booked a car for rental and we'll be going to Lake Tahoe for skiing and also to Los Angeles, from where we'll going to Hollywood.
So will upload loads of pictures after that trip.

Enjoy!

My Personal Blog

2007-10-31T09:08:00.000-07:00

Hey people!

I write here too. I shall continue posting on the BMath blog as well. Mostly pictures (or the links for it) and about various events and whatnot...

Do drop in to my personal page and leave a comment. Please read this before you start browsing the page. Your comments are always welcome.

Until then, keep checking Nair Anna's homepage for pictures.

I understand that everyone is busy with their respective coursework but, guys! do post a bit every now and then or this page will be dead soon. Those of you who maintain a homepage or a blog or a Picassa account, please post the links over here...

Cheers!
Shivam

London Pics!

2007-10-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

Hello!

I have been very busy trying to settle down over here. Classes have started and these people have the knack of coming up with the craziest of timetables. So, I haven't had the time to sit and write a post. There is a lot to tell you guys. I think I will try and put one long post up by next weekend. For now, follow the link below (Sid's homepage) to check out the pictures :-) (I will post links to the albums of other friends of mine soon!)

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/nair/Site/Photos.html

PS:- Where is the heck is the Europe crowd? And, has Mayank still not figured out how to post on the blog? :-P

Life in US

2007-10-06T10:10:00.001-07:00

Hey, finally got time to take some pictures of my house and post them over here.
Weekly assignments sap my energy and time and I am left with nothing more than enthu to watch One Piece.
So enjoy the pics!

My First Days in US

2007-09-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

Hi,
it's nice to get in touch with you guys. I am now in the US. Got over my jet lag and am doing some exploring work today. Americans are nice people, very polite (actually too polite for my liking, ask me, sometimes politeness becomes a bit of a pain in the ass).
My flat-mate is a Korean fellow very nice fellow indeed. He is here for Journalism. What else..... shall let you know of the life here once I have settled down somewhat, now it's too early.

First post...I am excite!

2007-08-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

In the car-fair!
Car-fair near the school

My last pic in India, in the Delhi Airport
Ohh..
I finally got a way to post my stuff. I am sending the first two pics of mine in US.
Those are not so good as I am still the 'desi' out-fit.
it'll take some time to get settled and get dressed well.
Till then I think you people will have to see me like this!
But how to upload pics? Let me try this also.

What is Mathematics??

2007-08-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

I really really wonder what everyone else here thinks mathematics is all about. Engineers actually think mathematics is about integrating polynomials while economics students think mathematics is all about finding the derivatove of polynomials. No one can beat the professor though. He is solid IKR type. Bstat, Mstat bugger, you think he knows something ..... but no. He first says that exponential density function is a*e^(-ax) . He then says that the distribution is 1 - e ^(-ax). Then someone asks him how to prove it (an IIT fellow) and so the prof says "Proving this is out of the syllabus for your course." So the IIT fellow asks if he can tell us how to prove it anyway and the prof then says "I'll think about it and tell you how to do it tomorrow."

Everything in our mathematics class is like this. We get assignments every week where we need to use Baye's theorem to calculate a 9x45 matrix using an excel sheet. He actually said that he can prove central limit theorem using an excel sheet. So i ask him how....im very surprised.....so he says just add a random variable approximately thousand times, then generate 1000 points from the random variable obtained and plot it on a graph and it obviously follows normal distribution....therefore proved.

What a chooth.

Batch Pics!

2007-08-14T23:43:00.001-07:00

BMath Third Year Classrom
(Budhu Anna in a guest appearance. In Red Tee shirt, Last bench in the first row from left)

In front of the Institute Building

A few Good Men.

2007-08-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

Prof. Maneesh Thakur
(Thank you for the recommendations and the ice creams :-D)

Humara neta kaisa ho?
Bhaiyaa-jee jaisa ho!!!

General Body Meeting
(Sid desperately pretending to be interested)

Practical Lessons in Probability Theory

Tom and Jerry

Semi-naked Mathew :-P

Enlightenment
(Kindly notice Nanda's torch)

Nishu darling :-)
(Mayank! Hands-off! He belongs to all of us)

Patri :-)

Black Dog!!!
(Sigh...)

D-Bra on a cleanliness drive

Humara Lucky Half-pant waala baal-bacchedar chintu

We call it Budhu Anna :-D

T-man!

Left Prasit. Right Chitro. No further comments.

Multi-tasking (Shilpak da)

Mass Molestation of Chitro
(Way back in first year)

Up Yer!

Nominees for President's post
(Just before the opening-speech-session)

Intoxication

Ra-sen-gaan!!!
(Deepu set to serve in the Volley tournament)

Shake Your Bon-Bon

Shadows of the Mind
(Shivam and Mathew)

Holi @ ISI - Bangalore

Manali

BMath 06-09 batch
(Assuming none of these buggers fail and, therefore, get kicked out or have to repeat)

Typical football ground scene

After the recovery of Takla's stolen mobile phone

Treasure-Hunt, 2007.
(Anna gone bonkers. Always happens at mid night.)

London Blues

Roger! bmath0413 reporting!

2007-08-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

Since I probably am the most jobless of us all, I would try updating the current status of all of us :-)

So, here goes:-

Dada Dun:- Apart from threatening the French VISA officials, dada is trying his level best to learn German. I think he will be leaving for Paris in 1st week of September.

Tunna:- Getting EXTREMELY bored in ISI-Delhi and is dribbling between chi-square tests and Raj Comics and going arreyy every now and then. So yeah! All usual stuff :-)

Chitro da:- Currently obsessed with learning card games. Will be leaving for US on 3rd Sept.

D-Bra:- His stomach is giving him trouble and, therefore, all the citizens of Kolkata are in REAL trouble. And he is very 'lonely' for his girl's father has had an accident. Well... Once a d-bra always a d-bra! Think he will also leave for US in the first week of Sept.

Deepu Da:- Busy getting sloshed and ogling the chicks of Baltimore county while pretending to do Statistics.

Kammo:- is having the time of his life bullshitting three innocent DU females who are also going to Paris with him.

Bhuri:- Spending his time learning the inexplicably hard (to him) things in life like booking a train ticket and opening a mail attachment. Last heard, SUNY refused to send him VISA papers for he is still a kid :-P Hopefully, will be joining Carnegie to do a PhD (!).

Escapist:-is getting properly jacked in IIM-B. Works 8 hours a day (other than class!). Poor chap has to also handle the entire population of the resident babes. We sincerely hope he manages a compensation package of 1 Crore p.a. at the end of two years.

Haridas:- Haiyaaaaaa Ho! All set to revolutionize the field of Arithmetic Geometry. Simply can not afford to waste time on a blog like all other useless fellows. [I am not quite sure when will he leave for Padova. Must be 1st week of September]

Mota:- Busy with the MMath coursework. Class-room-swim-class and all the other stuff.

Miyan:- is getting orgasmic over differential manifolds. Has somehow managed to convince the US VISA officials that he is not a terrosrist :-D. Will be flying to NY via Chicago. Not sure about the date though.

Lithium:- is bored to death Will be leaving for London on 22nd September.

Batch Blog

2007-08-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

Hey Chaps,
Now that we're all in different colleges, we'll find it rather hard to keep in touch and what not. So instead of mailing everyone with news, we can just post it onto a multiple blog. That way we've got one page that we can all access with everyone's stuff on it.
@Mayank : Learn to use it. It isn't hard. :-)