svasan

As soon as I saw "nuclear", I was put off. Not because I have anything against nuclear power (in fact I am fully convinced of its potential), but because of the way people perceive the word nuclear. Whenever "nuclear" is mentioned, people get negatively predisposed.

Case in point - Magnetic Resonance Imaging was initially called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The word nuclear was causing anxiety amongst the patients. The healthcare practitioners dropped nuclear and patients did not mind undergoing the MRI scan.

I think a massive rebranding exercise needs to be undertaken while pitching nuclear technologies. It could be atomic technology, it could be some other words that "click" with people as opposed to scaring them off. Unless the psychological battle is won, I am of the opinion that no amount of tech progress would convince people. Perception greatly matters with humans more than the merits of the product/service/technology/initiative.

edit - Not sure why this was downvoted. I was against the use of word "nuclear". Not anything else.

Thanks, but no thanks to FDA approved or "scientifically" structured and tested and accredited health recommendations for me.

I am willing to put to test the the traditional practices that I am (or become) aware of.

Why would one want to ignore beneficial knowledge received in the form of tradition? To be able to re-invent the wheel?

Any chance of getting access to the diagram you mention?

Is there a way to contact you?

Decoy is unnecessarily pejorative here. This is known as price anchoring. Anchoring is an influence tactic based on human psychological bias.

I am not really sure why ethics would come into this discussion. Do ethics come into picture when you are considering/selecting databases or programming languages?

edit: rephrased.

Just a thought - Why not reverse the phone number string and if there is a match in the first N digits of all the above phone numbers, then classify these as the same phone number? N would vary from country to country, no doubt. The intermediate characters like {,, +, -, .,} could also be stripped out from the phone number string to make the original problem less complex.

And very few people have reason to learn LISP or programming languages, for that matter. (If we are generalizing, we might as well go the full length and include the entire world population)

You seem to be mistaken that folks would learn a language for just the sake of knowing it. Far from it. Language is just a tool for communication of ideas. There have been some brilliant treatises, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies expressed in Sanskrit. Folks are more interested in accessing the thoughts and works in Sanskrit as opposed being infatuated with the technical aspects of the language.

Have you ever tried to understand the rationale behind a religious ritual? Not from your viewpoint - but from the viewpoint of why such a ritual came into existence? Did you equip yourself with the tools to undertake such a study?

For e.g., I perform a religious ritual called Sandhyavandanam [1]. This ritual comprises of many components. I see merit in many components of this daily ritual. Some components, I have not been able to appreciate their rationale. But I trust the seers who would have formulated such rituals. I do not have the time to go into every detail of every ritual and understand the underlying motivation(s) and perform the ritual as is. Same with science. I do not question every theory/law/hypothesis. I just trust the scientists and researchers. If and when "I" perceive an inconsistency in a ritual or a scientific law/theory/hypothesis I question it or try to understand more about it.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhyavandanam

Forgive my naivete, but what is the point you are trying to make here? Or is this an attempt at creating some kind of fallacy?

>>> Even the Nobel laureate scientist C.V Raman opposed space explorations in his time, saying that they are meddling with Gods.

Could you provide some citation here? As far as CV Raman's religious inclinations were concerned, my understanding is that he was an agnostic [1].

Being a scientist himself, I don't think it would have been in his nature to stifle the spirit of scientific inquiry in the name of religion.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._V._Raman

The dollar equivalent of the value the companies get in return would be an order of magnitude more than what Kaggle charges the companies/clients that sponsor the contests.

Kaggle is an interesting site. But the cynic in me says these contests/competitions are just a cheap way of effort harvesting. For a pittance, the companies sponsoring these contests are getting tremendous value in return. If you are a statistician/analytics person, there is no reason to let your value and skills get commoditized in this manner.

Very insightful and open. The point that stood out was how selling trumped all other tasks/activities.

The same thing was echoed by PG in the inc.com article that was posted recently [1].

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293

As mentioned elsewhere here, Modern Money Mechanics booklet published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is a very good read. It explains the concept of "money" at a very fundamental level. The booklet talks about how and where money is "created", who are the players involved, and a working example of how these things happen.

Search for "Modern Money Mechanics" by FRB Chicago.

edit - Sorry, just realized this comment might be off-topic.

And why would you want to bring religion into this discussion?

I belong to a religious group where initiation into meditation happens at about 10-12 years of age for boys. This initiation ceremony is an important ceremony (called thread ceremony) in a male's life. After initiation, every male has to perform a ritual called Sandhya Vandanam [1] thrice every day for the rest of their lives. The ritual has different components. The two important components are Praanaayamaa (breath control exercise) and mantra meditation. A mantra is a Vedic Hymn that is chanted/repeated again and again (for pre-specified # of times). In the Sandhya Vandanam ritual the mantra that is chanted is the famed Gayatri mantra. The mantra is chanted with the following schedule:

Morning at sunrise - Praatah Sandhya - 108 times

Midday - Maadhyanika - 32 times

During evening twilight - Saayum Sandhya - 64 times

The Vedic definition of mantra is "mantaaram traayate iti mantrah". In English this translates to "That which protects the mind is called mantra".

When I was young, I used to perform this ritual regularly. Though I performed the ritual regularly, I used to wonder about the requirement of such a ritual. Over the past few years I have come to know some fascinating things about the ritual and also the Vedas. After gaining the insights, it is ironic that nowadays I do not perform the ritual regularly at all. This article has come at the right time for me to get back into the meditation routine.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhyavandanam

Actually, this is not off-topic at all if the "startup" is trying to build a viable business if it is dependent on platforms (Apple/Nokia/Android/etc) that are not under your control. If at all you want to be a mobile app developer, you are better off developing apps for clients who want a mobile presence. The odds of being the Next Big FadApp is decreasing by the minute as app discovery is becoming more of a problem due to the crowding.

I believe this would be the one - https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric...

The threats are many. Getting transferred, having false civil/criminal cases foisted against themselves, death threats, violence from goons and henchmen, etc.

Recently, there was the case of Ashok Khemka who spoke out against nepotism and such. He was relieved of his responsibilities (as a Director General/Inspector General in the Revenue Registry) immediately and seconded as a Managing Director elsewhere (a fairly low level position compared to his experience and seniority). There is also a wiki page about him. An honest and upright officer. His qualifications are also excellent (PhD in CS, MBA + IAS).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashok_Khemka

If such hardship can be faced by a very senior government officer, the smaller fish have absolutely no chance but to relent.

While it is not easy to become an expert in any field or pursuit, one should neither overplay the "it is a very hard field / not very easy" argument nor should one underplay the effort involved in becoming good. 10000 hours (equates to roughly 5yrs at 40hrs per week) to expertize seems like a good rule of thumb to keep in mind. Someone said - "The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves."

For any field, one has to provide positive encouragement (and a good platform/set of tools and techniques) to people seeking to get into that field, while being grounded in reality.

I'd be curious to know if kaggle measures/publishes model performance, model degradation, etc., for the models that the companies/institutions ended up incorporating in their business activities.

edit - for clarity.

A data dump would not really help because the data could have been influenced by

1) a key company policy 2) specific business activity 3) input coming from another model

It is better to

a) define the problem, b) collect the data, c) build the variable library, d) and then fit the model

rather than jump to step (d) directly because the modeler/scientist has greater understanding of the entire set of data going into the model development. It is very likely that the modeler would uncover any/all of the three influencing factors I mentioned above, during the data collection stage.

While kaggle is an interesting concept, from a different perspective it looks like an "effort harvesting" operation. For a pittance, the companies/institutions that are sponsoring the contests are getting a steal. (I am not sure if the million dollar prize is still up for grabs.) However, for folks who do want to break into data sciences/statistics field, kaggle certainly is a good platform to get acquainted with data science/statistics related skills.

>> Everything is data at the end of the day.

But you have to interpret the data within the context of the business need/requirement.

Building a credit risk model is vastly different from building a (personal) insolvency/bankruptcy model though both may entail the same set of steps in developing the model. The variables that make it to the model depend on the business need.

In kaggle, one of the datasets that I messed around with had variable labels as Var_1, Var_2, ..., Var_X. So while fitting a model, I would not know why a particular variable made it into the model. You can see that this kind of variable labeling does not give me any insight into how that variable was generated. I need to know whether the variable was raw/aggregated/transformed etc. And that takes you back to understanding the data in the context of the business/domain.

Winning a kaggle contest and how a particular statistical model performed under normal business conditions are totally different. (metrics of interest for evaluating the model - how much money was saved, did the model bring about requisite behavior change, etc.) And performance under real life business conditions is what matters, not who won the contest. And to get good models for a specific business need, you do need domain knowledge.

Does kaggle publish how the models performed under normal business conditions?

Side note about f.lux. I installed f.lux on my windows XP laptop and it kind of messed up the settings. The funny thing is even after uninstalling f.lux, my laptop retained the brightness settings that were set by f.lux. (Thankfully, it is fixed now.) It also crashed a few times due to its memory consumption.

Issues highlighted in the FAQ page here. http://stereopsis.com/flux/faq.html

The ancient Indians perfected memory retention of large bodies of knowledge (called Vedas dating back more than 4000-6000 years) with the help of very elaborate schemes. The Vedas are composed in a language called Vedic Sanskrit (althought similar to Classical Sanskrit, still distinct). These schemes not only aided in retention, but also preserved the phonetic purity and semantics. The syllables were also intonated. Loosely speaking (the reason why I say that is I still have not found a compact and crystal clear way to convey what Vedic intonations are there for), intonations are also representative of grammatical case/context. So, the syllable intonation also had to be maintained. A brief preview of some commonly employed chanting schemes are given below:

For describing the various schemes let us consider a sentence with five words having indices 1 2 3 4 5.

Let !! - represent a termination sequence. We'll not get into technicalities, but take it as is.

1) Krama Paatha - This is relatively easy and each of the indexed word will be chanted as follows.

1 2

2 3

3 4

4 5

5!!

Notice that a given word is clubbed with the next word. (Forward chaining). There are two words in a sequence

2) Jataa Paatha - This is bit more complicated since it involves backward sequences as well.

1 2 2 1 1 2

2 3 3 2 2 3

3 4 4 3 3 4

4 5 5 4 4 5

5!!

The complexity is due to the fact that the words will have to be chanted in reverse sequence as well. (backward chaining) For e.g. {1, 2} {2, 1} {1, 2}. There are a total of 6 words in each sequence.

3) Ghana Paatha - This is the most complex chanting mode (also called the bell mode of chanting). The chanting sequence is as below.

1 2 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 1 1 2 3

2 3 3 2 2 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 4

3 4 4 3 3 4 5 5 4 3 3 4 5

4 5 5 4 4 5

5!!

Phew!! Each sequence has 13 words made from three words. There are two word forward/backward sequences as well as three word forward/backward sequences. For e.g. {1, 2} {2, 1} for two word sequence. {1, 2, 3} and {3, 2, 1} for three word sequence. The astute reader will observe that the penultimate sequence is the same as Jathaa Paatha (and also the first six words of any sequence constitute the same).

There are several intracacies that are involved. One is compounding of words. Word compounding introduces changes to the pronunciation. Another is the change of phonetic intonation due to the modified sequence of chanting the words in a given scheme. These repetition techniques enabled the scholars to get a "feel" for how words would be intonated and pronounced phonetically in various circumstances.

I had always wondered why such elaborate schemes were devised by the Vedic seers. I have come to realise that the seers knew that when knowledge was transmitted in the oral form, it inevitably introduced corruptions in the words. In Vedic Sanskrit, purity of syllable (both phonetic pronunciation and intonation) is of utmost importance. Even a slight change in a syllable (either phonetic or intonation) would completely change the meaning of the sentence.

These techniques not only aided in error detection in chanting, but also error correction (specifically error correction in syllable intonation). If someone were chanting a sequence of words, one could verify if the words are being intonated correctly (of course it would take an expert to do that). There was a document that I read quite some time back which resorted to some abstract algebra (group theory) based arguments for explaining the error correction mechanism of some of these techniques.

Of course, many of these schemes (and also other linguistic aspects like word compounding) always kept one thing in mind - the ease with which humans are able to cognize and generate the sounds representing given syllables in a sequence of words.

In conclusion, these methods ultimately enabled scholars/priests to be able to: a) remember entire bodies of verses/compositions with relative ease. b) transmit such knowledge to students with zero word corruption (yes, although I am neither a linguistic nor a Vedic expert, I can go out on a limb to make this claim - zero corruption).

Edit :- Minor edits for readability/spelling.

> 'interesting trivia'

In the above - grammar, rhetoric, logic - formed the "trivium" and - arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy - formed the "quadrivium".

Also "trivium" represented the place where three roads would intersect. People would meet here and exchange pleasantries and gossip. That is how you get the current meaning of the word "trivia".

India has achieved quite a bit with its space exploration. It is the same space programme that has provided Indians with satellites that are applied to agriculture. The IRS-P6 Resourcesat has been deployed for studying cropping patterns [1]. I am sure other satellites have been used for various other agricultural applications. Frankly this "feed the poor first" meme of the western media [and some disillusioned folks] is quite irritating. The meme only goes to show that the western media does not really appreciate achievement from a "developing country".

When India was on its way to launch its first rocket [way back when], some parts of the rocket were carried by the ISRO scientists pillion riding on a bicycle. Time magazine, in true western style, ridiculed that inicident. (Unfortunately I am not able to find references for this. So recounting from memory here.) Now after the moon shot with Chandrayaan-1, we know who had the last laugh.

However, on this particular occasion, I think this announcement is a populist one. The Central Government has nothing to show in terms of achievement. The government's image is severely tattered, what with all the corruption charges, policy paralysis, lack of any real economic progress, etc. Nothing like whipping up some nationalism to distract the people from noticing the lack of government performance.

Without the political context, I am guessing this Mars mission might provide scientists with 1) Insights on developing long range space travel 2) Insights into instrumentation technology 3) Robotics related tech

And India has had collaborative associations with several space agencies from different countries. It is only adding to the already existing space related body of knowledge.

All the disillusioned folks who think they are entitled to dictate policy decisions on account of their country giving "handouts" to India, feel free to take a hike.

[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2025000