Girls & PJs

I come across a lot of weird girls. Just like girls come across weird guys, I assume.

Yesterday, a really cute girl added me on Facebook. But, I don't know who she is or where she's from, so I sent her a message asking her. I also mentioned that I didn't mean to be rude, and the message was interspersed with my gay smileys to ensure no misinterpretation of tone. And today morning, I get a reply saying that she didn't care whether I added her or not, and to behave myself. I hadn't realised that asking for an introduction from a stranger is bad behaviour. Maybe I should have replied "Hi!!! Long time!!! Why have you taken 19 years to find me?! Come, meet me by the poolside for a chat...". But, I'm sure it would have been the same response even then. Girls, oh, girls!

Here's one more. People have these weird Gmail ids like sweetcandy00, hotlover69, sexydude007in, and so on, so I added him/her thinking I might know the person. I've added at least a 100 people in this manner, and 90% of the time I'm right, and 10% of the time it's a random girl. And these girls are really random. One of them buzzes me.

XX: Thr????
Aa: Hi, who's this?
XX:
...
Aa: ...goes to the canteen at 9:50pm...
XX: thr?? (at 9:54pm)
XX: thr???? (at 9:55pm)
XX: whr are u? why are u ignoring me???? (at 9:56pm)
XX: hellloo??! (at 9:57pm)
XX: You don't have brains or what??? (at 9:58pm)
...(silence)...

What I never understood was what she really thought before sending that last message. Did she think that I was reading her messages, and wasn't able to process them? Or did she think that I processed them, and my Turing-machine-brain did not halt while searching for a Y/N answer to her question? Did she even consider that I could have been lost in space-time, warping around from wormhole to wormhole, and hence wasn't even sure whether I was really thr or not? Or that I was fighting a war against dark matter, dark forces, and so on, and hence was too busy to reply? How on earth did me not replying to her imply that I don't have brains? Anyway, that was the end of her. When I came back, I blocked her.

I already don't understand most things about most girls, and hence I set my expectations of understanding really low, at epsilon, tending to zero. And still some of them manage to wiggle through that small gap. Anyway, here's a quote to end, that deserves to become famous some day.

"Girls are overrated and PJs are underrated" -- Zubin Mehta

Asok, my hero :P

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2003-09-16/

And the next one is even better...

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2005-10-30/

What Am I Doing Wrong?!

http://www.jumbojoke.com/what_am_i_doing_wrong.html

Allegedly, the reply is posted by Rob Campbell of J. P. Morgan. Damn cool.

Oh, us hedge fund people! Sigh.

Convocation

When you think about a convocation, the ceremony which converts you, the young and erratic graduand, to you, the mature and responsible graduate, several things come to mind. Speeches, black gowns, degrees, photographs and of course an overwhelming sense of accomplishment combined with a screaming urge to take on the world. However, our convocation snapped us back to the Indian reality, and we shall take a look at what all went right and wrong, this year.

The attire At IITB, we wear lovely white kurta pyjamas, and not the black graduation gowns. While some people compared it to attending a massive funeral, I felt it was quite a graceful, solemn and respectful (to our culture) attire. After all, we needn't copy everything from the west. The degrees are also laminated and presented in a blue file, and even though it isn't fancy, like a scroll wrapped in a red ribbon, it seemed like a very practical way to hand out a degree. Each also student has an 'uttariya' (a shawl-like thing) with the IITB logo stamped onto it in, I believe, the cheapest possible manner. Not like we're going to trek and swim in it, but it doesn't even look good - embroidery might have been better, though costlier. The BTechs get a brown one - why, oh, why couldn't it have been deep blue?! - and the colours change with the degree being received.

The crowd Parents were supposedly allowed to attend the convocation. There were mainly 3 kinds of passes - blues for VIPs, limited greens for viewing from Convocation hall itself (issued on FCFS basis), and reds for viewing it from LT. However, the limited greens were fairly unlimited, with many more passes issued than the number of available seats. This resulted in a lot of harassment for parents who were "assured" they would be able to sit in the Convo, but were outside even after it had started. Things were worked out in the end, with some grudgingly going to LT and some being later allowed inside. Guesthouse rooms were booked and overbooked months in advance, but that's an old story (though one could imagine IIT helping parents get bookings in nearby hotels or guesthouses at reduced rates - something they should be doing anyway given our guesthouses' low capacity).

The speech The powerful, memorable, inspiring speech delivered by a current/past great to a thousand greats of the future - the last dose of brilliant practical advice based on personal experience that one would receive before leaving IIT. Most of the setup was right - E. Sreedharan, a great, had arrived, and a thousand greats of the future were waiting. However, the speech itself was highly disappointing - it had a lot of drab (something my neighbour or niece could have cooked up, like "health is wealth"), very little personal experience (except for him getting the chance to attribute the Delhi metro hiccups to lack of professional ethics), and was hardly inspiring (of course you have seen the top 10 convocation speeches on YouTube?). Poof. Bad start.

The stage I'm sure there is a justification for it, but I couldn't really understand why over 50 top professors (forming the senate, I guess) were sitting in gowns on stage for so many hours of pure torture. The cameras were there to ruin everything for them - the odd jeans, the odd Kurkure, the odd nap and the not-so-odd disinterest in the proceedings, all caught on roll (before editing, at least). If they were just trying to make place for parents, good job, otherwise the practicality is to be questioned. Makes the stage look stuffy too. Poof. Bad setting.

The damn ceremony Approximately one thousand students, each on stage for a massive 7-8 seconds - seriously, who the hell cares?! Students kept leaving the hall for "extended toilet breaks" aka photo sessions and parents were bored to death because they couldn't even do that. If it makes any sense at all, the convocation should be held on two days. 550 odd undergraduates on one day, the rest (IDC, SOM, MTechs, PhDs, etc) on another. That way parents won't have a problem either, and the professors can sit comfortably off-stage.

The photographs An independent set of photographers set up in front of Alumni office, made convocation frames of varying sizes, made millions, because they shamelessly overcharged (I estimate 3-4 times the cost outside), but like all monopolies go, people shelled out a lot of money because of the occasion and lack of choice. Surely the institute can help manage a deal with a company that is favourable to them (hundreds of orders in a few hours!) and us (affordable rates!).

The spirit This overrides everything else before it. It's a uniquely mixed feeling. Years and years of hard work (or no work, whichever). The result was finally in our hands. The smiles go back a long way. The knowledge, that it's probably the last time that everyone is going to be together, is killing. Sharing precious moments, remembering crazy times, and soon walking away in a thousand different directions. It's a feeling that doesn't emerge often. Trust me.

On the whole, the convocation was a good experience and a lot of fun, but there are innumerable organizational flaws that can be corrected to make it far more memorable, and as perfect as we all envisage it to be, and as it arguably should be.

The Alternate Urinal Protocol

The Urinal Protocol Vulnerability is beautiful. If you can't access it, google for it, and check out a cached version. If you don't want to, the basic question is "When a guy goes into the bathroom, which urinal does he pick?"

Somehow, I don't accept its basic assumption that "the first guy picks an end urinal, and every subsequent guy chooses the urinal which puts him furthest from anyone else peeing".

I believe that a man is most susceptible when he is peeing. Even if you were to irritate/humiliate him while he was peeing (take a picture, play paint-ball, throw darts, steal his laptop bag, etc), he will complete peeing and then take your life. In this susceptible state, a man prefers not to be intimidated by large walls next to him (makes it more spacious, allows faster escapes from the paintball gun since he is not cornered, gives a feeling of being in open nature, etc). Also, by the pure love of symmetry, he will move to the middle of any available row of urinals.

Hence, I come up with a different basic assumption - the first guy will go directly to the middle urinal, at position X. The urinals have been divided into 2 parts (leaving out X-1,X,X+1). The next 2 men will occupy the middle of each of these parts. And so on, recursively. You might think it takes guts to challenge the mighty XKCD's assumptions, but let's just go ahead and see what happens.

For example, if there were 7 urinals (marked 1 to 7), the filling would be in the order 4, 2, 6. If there were 13, then the order would be 7, 3, 11, 5, 9, 1, 13.

Let N be the number of urinals. Let g(N) represent the number of men in the optimal packing of urinals under the new basic assumption. Hence we have,

g(2N) = g(N-1) + g(N-2) + 1
g(2N+1) = 2*g(N-1) + 1
g(0)=0, g(1)=g(2)=g(3)=1
I wrote a simple C++ program (which I have described in a cramped form below, for the sake of newbies) -

#include < iostream >
using namespace std;
int M[250];
void calc(int n){if(n==250) return;
else if(n%2==0) M[n]=M[n/2-1]+M[n/2-2]+1;
else M[n]=2*M[(n-3)/2]+1; calc(n+1); return;}
int main(){M[0]=0;M[1]=1;M[2]=1;M[3]=1;calc(4);
for (int i=1; i<250; i++)
cout<< i <<" "<< float(M[i])/float(i) * 100 << endl;}


Turns out that the plot (GNUPlot) that I got was very interesting...



If you check out the values, it turns out that the maxima are all around 50%, minima around 33%, and hence the graph (shape, values, etc) is almost an exact replica of the graph based on the other assumption (in the first link), only shifted by a constant, 4.

The maxima are at N = 2^k - 3 = 1, 5, 13, 29...
The minima are at N = 3*2^k-1 - 3 = 3, 9, 21, 45...

I don't know if this is obvious. I thought filling something in 2 completely different ways would lead to some interesting differences (this starts off at N=3 itself, where mine gives g(3)=1, as against the original f(3)=2). Hence, I found the graph, and the entire exercise, fairly interesting.

In any case, the results are different, and the only way to verify which result is more reliable statistically, is by experiment. We need to have video cameras set up in hundreds of geographical locations, and study the behaviour of men. We must ensure that the entry is approximately symmetrical, avoiding bias towards either end. The lighting and cleanliness should be a constant as well. No doubt, we will have aberrations (a homosexual man going directly next to somebody else, a huge man preferring to go towards a tiny guy to enjoy the pleasure of disrupting smooth flow, etc). But, I'm sure there are enough people out there who would like to verify which protocol is truly reliable.