Superficially there is no commonality present among smokers, statisticians and Data Engineers. The only thing common is that they love their tools.
For smokers, a cigar is a tool to get relief from stress or pressure. The same thing applies to statisticians and data engineers. An unresolved problem creates stress and anxiety, so statisticians and data engineers use statistical methods and tools.
Above this superficial analogy, there lies a deep similarity among smokers, statisticians, and data engineers.
A chain smoker knows about the statutory warning that smoking is injurious to health. Still, they embrace smoking because smokers value near future…
It will be an exaggeration to say that Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp are spreading knowledge at a rate faster than the speed of light.
I observed three kinds of knowledge on these platforms.
- Fake knowledge: Often, these are facts and opinions which get circulated by people whose identity is difficult to trace, and so is it’s validity. Hence, it is fake knowledge. Readers need to be cautious while using this kind of knowledge to make decisions.
- Folk knowledge: This kind of knowledge is embedded in articles written on platforms like Medium or in the answers written…
I believe that doing research is more about managing your resources productively than about possessing academic aptitude, knowledge, and skills for it.
A research scholar or a PhD candidate with limited talent but an unbounded enthusiasm to learn new skills, to explore new areas, and with an organized mind can have a productive research career.
Managing time, talent, and emotions become a challenge especially if you are a part-time research student. By part-time, I mean if you have enrolled for a PhD program and work in some organization to support your PhD studies and family.
During my PhD program, I…
A turning point in my teaching career
It was the year 2003. By that time, I had established myself as an undergraduate teacher with 12 years of teaching experience and looking forward to improving my academic qualification with the PhD program.
I was attending the two-months-long preparatory programme at IIT-Bombay. The purpose of the program was to meet a prospective PhD guide and decide the broad area for research.
On one particular day, my PhD advisor, Prof. R K Joshi, asked me to join his class on Distributed Systems. He was teaching this course to undergraduate and post-graduate students. I attended the lecture…
I was travelling from Bikaner to Mumbai. A Gujarati family of seven members were co-travelling with me. Four gentlemen and three ladies having experienced all shades of life were enjoying an excursion away from home. The average age of the members appeared to be over 50.
I was sharing the same compartment with them. Initially, I kept myself aloof from their discussions. But the journey was more than 24 hours long and I had nothing better to do, so I started eavesdropping.
One particular lady in the group seemed rather displeased with another man, presumably her husband. …
Yesterday, I went to the railway station to see my son off. He was going back to Mumbai after spending a short vacation at home.
I started ignoring his lifestyle once he went off to college. I stopped paying any attention to what he wore and what he ate and drank a long time ago.
But the graffiti on the T-shirt that he was wearing today caught my attention. “Existence is pain”, it read.
My wife was curious to know about it. So he explained to her that it was a quote from some TV show. …
