10 Minutes !!

How to address India's education problem - III - School-college chain

2011-07-26T13:22:00.018+05:30

This post is second in the series after the first one and second one. I propose to alleviate the problem by having a chain of teacher-training colleges and schools. If you remember, the problems we face are:

Not having enough schools
Not having good enough schools

Our solution will first train teachers to teach in a manner 'desirable'. This attacks the second problem, whereby we change the structure of school education and the learning pattern through our teachers.

We will place trained teachers in 'willing schools' . If needed, we will start schools within a periphery of 20 km of the college. Over a period of time, we intend have enough schools and teachers for every child in the vicinity.

Obviously we can't solve both the problems a day or even a year. The plan will involve increase the number of schools /colleges, from (1 college + 5 schools) to (50 colleges + 500 schools) in 2 decades. If each school holds 200 students, we will be teaching a million students.

Of course, there are 4 pre-conditions:

Education policy
Funding
Parental interest
Democracy and civil rule

How to address India's education problem - II

2011-06-23T04:07:00.008+05:30

This post is second in the series after the first one. First we need to identify the real problems, for which we need to look at a number of symptoms of this decease carefully (e.g. why don't Kerala students go to schools as much as earlier?):

There are not enough schools (which adds to parents stress) therefore, those existing ones have arbitrary entrance tests, even for admission to nursery classes!!!
Even average, no-good schools charge extra-ordinary fees, and if some parents complain, children are humiliated as a punishment for their parents' action (showing how much they must love those kids in the first place.)
Many students (from poorer families) can not go to the 'established aided schools', Some schools even deny entry to many students. Students are thus forced go to horrible government schools, so many patronize smaller private (un-aided) schools instead. Of course, these private schools are often run by a small team, even then they outdo government schools, for
Government schools do not have enough trained teachers (heck, some states did not bother to have any norms to employ teachers), and many of teachers do not report to work. Those who do teach, are forced to also do menial jobs (for the same salary), such as cooking, census duty and election work. Note: no retraining of teachers or gradation based on teaching skills.
It is not just school teachers, the whole pattern of Indian education system is like a badly-made, well-worn quilt. There are only a handful of schools who care for their students' learning: Hrishi Valley, Genie Kids, (once upon a time) Shanti Niketan...
Against no-fail policy, schools fail students in 9th standard, only allowing the brightest students to appear for 10th examination under its name. This explains 100% pass percentage and guarantees that more students will flock to that 'good school'.
No wonder, students do not want to be in schools and schools are not relevant and do not respond to their lives' demands.
Those students who stay in schools are stressed (can you believe this: some schools have removed ceiling fans so students can't hang themselves ?)
If all this was not enough, there are school examinations and other prestigious examinations to appear for, and students have enormous stress from exams as well. In 2006, about 6000 students killed themselves over examination stress, and many deaths were possibly not reported as such (where are Roy's, Hazare's and Baba's now?)

Simplest things to make out from above are:

Schools are designed not to be fun and are disengaged from students' lives: so students are stressed.
If schools are just about tolerable, there are 'tough' examinations, where gradation is disengaged from learning: so again students are stressed.
For many students, being in school does not give returns in terms of skills for survival.
Most school managements do not care for points above, and are interested in status quo (which includes removing ceiling fans, of course.)
Government makes rules/ laws (who runs a school or how to employ a school teacher) and they do not work, which is not surprising, for
Most government rules are arbitrary, without any love or care for children underpinning it or even simple market economics.

Now, read how Tagore approaches schooling. This is the angle we will pursue further about how schools ought to be (did you not guess it from my previous posts?)

How to address India's education crisis - I

2011-06-18T03:46:00.008+05:30

You should read my previous two posts from emails in my mailbox here (1) and here (2) . If you read my replies, you will notice how little I could offer in solutions.

In his mail S says, "I wanted BITS very badly, and so we are trying to get admission through management quota". Now, S worked very hard and actually scored decently, but BITS changed its admission criteria: it now requires 80% in some other board examination.

If you think that is irrational, surely you must read about cut-off percentage of 100% for admission to a college which has no international standing of any kind! This insanity has made even crooks and liars to cry foul and allowed a clue-less minister to jump in and make matters worse by hob-nobbing in education sector more than he already does.

Really, how sad is it that we can not have as many colleges and universities as we like! And all Congress-promoted student body does is to add various road blocks to entry of foreign universities in India. Clearly, this is because the student bodies will be irrelevant and passe' in those international schools. This is despite UK and Canada ready to provide better quality education institutions. Others, such as MIT, Harvard, Georgia Tech have expressed desire to start operating in India.

However, the entrenched powers in education sector (unions, babu's weary to loose their power-hold over others) do not want them to come at the cost of damage to our young students. The arguments made range from scare-crows as "given rise to chances of adoption of various unfair practices, besides commercialisation" and "adverse impacts on the national character of Indian education" to blatantly pedantic ideological, such as "these possibilities are attractive to the upper crust of the middle class who have reached positions of power from colonial times through education in prestigious foreign universities." The other "apprehension" generally shared by the intelligentsia is about the possible misuse of liberalisation by 'fly-by-night operators' who could be looking for a quick return on their investment. Now, how ridiculous is that! So many Birlas and Pais have fooled so many Indians to the tunes of billions just to provide mediocre education, where were these argumentative folks then?

There are other simple ways to allay these problems, but powers-to-be would rather divert attention and keep status-quo, while they send their own kids abroad.

We do not have good schools for undergraduates, we do not have enough of even mediocre ones. If you think IITs are world best, please note their international rankings (my alma-matter, IISc, is top-ranked Indian university at a lowly 300+).

We need more schools, better schools and NOW...

Admissions to schools: old problems and new questions

2011-06-18T03:30:00.004+05:30

Here is the second email:

This is S from Pune.

How are you? Hope things are fine there.

My BITSAT results have just come out and I have scored 240 marks. But the eligibilty criteria for the same is that one must score 80% in PCM in 12th Boards, which unfortunately I have not acheived. Actually, it was 70% till last year and this year they set the bar to 80% which is ironic because I have 70% in PCM this year.

I wanted BITS very badly, and so we are trying to get admission through management quota.So I was wondering if there is any management quota in BITS that we can avail of. If so, what is the procedure to get admission by management quota? Do you know any trustee, friend or person of authority who can help us out with this procedure? Can you suggest any other way to get admission? Please help me out in this matter. Your guidance is very important for us at this junction.

And here is my response

प्रिय xxxx
तुला निराश करू नये असे वाटते, पण या बाबतीत माझा पूर्ण नाईलाज आहे. BITS मध्ये 'कोटा' पद्धत नाही, फक्त त्यांच्या (माझ्या दृष्टीने चुकीच्या) ठरवलेल्या प्रमाणानुसार ते प्रवेश देतात. [I wish I would not disappoint you, but it is unavoidable. BITS does not have any quota system and they admit students on (in my opinion dubious) merit criteria]

This is utter bullshit, you know. Bright students like you should never be denied good college education and our monstrous government has achieved exactly this. I don't want to get into that right now, but this is not your fault but someone else's blunder. I am very sorry, but I went through something similar in my own student life and hated it myself (which is why I want to teach and start my own university.)

Please don't get discouraged or frustrated, I went through that phase as well. You will still do well, given your ability to work hard and excellent support structure you have at home and around. A better approach now will be to select a good college anywhere, and do something you like. I will suggest not to focus on engg (unless you know what you want exactly), but keep your options open towards science, economics, arts, whatever. It is unlikely anyone at your age can decide everything, another major fault of Indian system is that it does not allow any experimentation (to select and change stream if desired). So, you select now what you find the best, choose a college with a good library and laboratories (as I think it best). Then you are at least set to work on your own...

Admissions to Schools: old problem, new questions...

2011-06-18T03:19:00.004+05:30

Hiya, back to blogging. This is caused by emails to my mailbox from two anxious souls, hard-working and well-meaning ones. These two would start their professional life with so much anxiety, it breaks my heart. Why on earth do Indians have such a pathetic education system!

Without further ado: here is email one, followed by my own response. My commentary will follow after the two separate mail posts.

(My friend Abhi writes)

maza bhacha atta 12 wi zala. tyala engg. shivay vegale kahi karayache ahe. [My nephew just finished HSC and he wants to do something other than engineering] i mean BSC -> MSC -> and higher education

mee tyala Chemistry ghe ase suchawale ahe. [I suggested Chemistry to him] ani higher educationla he will have multiple options. so he is starting with PCM and then he can decide but another option is Chemistry, BioChemistry and Botony (he is not interested in Botony - so after 1st year he will drop botony)

what is your view? any guidance tip?

My answer is long (please excuse the small letters)

Abhi

first of all, give this young man my 2 thumbs up!! in so many years, so many came to ask about where/how to do engg. this is the first time someone asked me about something else. he must have an independent mind and a strong will to search for what he likes/ dislikes. i will highly encourage him and his parents to allow him to follow his instincts and liking.

unfortunately, there are few options for good undergraduate education in India. colleges and univs are not great and syllabi are limiting. if you see what international univs offer to students, it is a shame we don't have anything close to that for intelligent students like your nephew :-( the same is true about engg education, btw, BITS/ IITs notwithstanding.

the only few places who offer some semblance of quality: Xavior's (Mumbai), Stephen's (Delhi) and Presidency (Kolkata). in pune, there is a new IISER, where I have a couple of close friends (xxxx e.g.). there are are some good profs scattered everywhere: Prof Kulkarni at Fergusson, Prof Watve at Garware, for example. The main problem is: students are left to themselves to devise ways to learn, no innovative teaching, etc. i am trying to give you a complete picture, to allow him to choose carefully.

this should not discourage him, with a couple of good friends, he will do quite well. remember, I had Shrirang throughout my BSc and then great friends in MSc. so, my advice is to choose a college like Fergusson with a decent library (and a handful of profs in area of interest), make 'good friends', and connect with interested profs from other places (IISER, IUCAA, Pune Univ, etc.) he should read book by Krishnamegh kunte for some inspiration (that 'failed student' is in Harvard now):

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~kunte/RanvedaCover.htm

now the BIG QUESTION is: what does this man like? he should not think that only science is his destiny, even a good economist is equally valuable (and earns a lot higher salary in the market). he has to find, out on his own, what he likes and would like doing for a large part of his life. of course, he could do something else later on, but for now he has to have something in his mind. no one can help with this, unfortunately -- `ghode ko paani koi nahin pila sakta'.

he has to explore a bit: surprisingly BITS/IITs offer him other variety of courses at undergraduate level, so there is more exposure possible. this option does not exist in most univs/ colleges. i am not sure how IISER does this either. the only way to know if he likes economics (in a place like Fergusson) is to meet other students from economics and learn from them. it is not desirable but not avoidable. i could not do that, and i wish i had read economics earlier in my life (as well as neuro-biology and Marathi literature).

but, all said and done, his honesty and decision to look elsewhere is commendable. He needs to be open minded and brave, only those do exceptionally well in today's world. If he can write more about what he wants to do, or his inclinations, it would help me write a little more detail.

Summerhill is an island...

2010-05-13T02:53:00.001+05:30

ओ मांझी रे, अपना किनारा, नदिया कि धारा हैं |

Summerhill is an island. It has to be an island, because its parents live in towns miles apart, in countries overseas. Since it is impossible to collect all the parents together in the town of Leiston, Suffolk, Summerhill cannot be a part of Leiston’s cultural and economic and social life.

I hasten to add that the school is not an island to Leiston town. We have many contacts with local people, and the relationship on both sides is a friendly one. Yet fundamentally, we are not a part of the community. I would never think of asking the editor of the local newspaper to publish success stories about my old pupils. We play games with the town children, but our educational aims are far apart.

Not having any religious affiliation, we have no connection with religious bodies in the town. If Summerhill were part of the town community center, it would be obliged to give religious teaching to its pupils.

[Summerhill A RADICAL APPROACH TO CHILD REARING 1968, A. S. Neill]

Summerhill, the book

2010-05-03T21:32:00.002+05:30

You can download this book: "summerhill" by A S Neil. It will change your views about children, learning, and education. It will educate you once more.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/5081386/summerhill

This much is a great post in itself, I will quote more from this book soon.

Cobalt 60 and a dirty bomb ?

2010-04-27T15:03:00.002+05:30

There were multiple events of radio-activity discovered in scrap metal industry area of New Delhi. One poor worker has died from exposure.

Question is: if they found so many Cobalt 60 pieces, what are chances that one such could be attached to a RDX bomb to make a dirty bomb? This is a real possibility, a scenario explored by Americans after 9/11. If a bomb is possible, as per this study, it can potentially make Delhi a cancer hell for a decade or more!

Has the government appointed someone to look after this? I am sure some terrorist would notice this window of opportunity sooner or later. :shudder:

.

MIT and Tutions !

2010-04-21T12:30:00.003+05:30

Read this email to a student collaborator (who will soon join MIT PhD program in Massachusetts) by another junior student.

======================================================================
From: "pxxxx mxxx" pxxxx@gmail.com"
To:fxxxx@bits-goa.ac.in
Subject: hi..

hi axxx...

congrats for MIT..m a 1st year student in bpgc...i knw its kinda early but jus wanted 2 know how u got thru nd wat ws ur GRE score...btw did u do sm coachin or nythin..

thnx

P
================================================================

Now, how do we address this insanity?

P, no, there are no tution classes in how to get to MIT, or how to create a new musical 'Rag', or how to run Pepsi Co., or how to create a new 4 GHz processor.

P, you can start preparing for GRE by writing your emails with proper words, instead of "prpr wrds"...

If you surmised that P got into India's 'top-class' engineering by rote learning, remembering books and solving a million problems one by one, you are very close to the truth. He must have attended coaching classes from his 5th standard, esp. for 10th, 12th, IIT, BITS, CET, AICTE exams. The last 5 exams are to be given within 1 month of each other. No wonder P thinks that even MIT admissions are of the same level as BITS/ IIT. I wish I could ask him to take tutions from Raghu and Suresh in BITS, but that would be atrocity against my dear ex-colleagues.

If you are an Indian student, this situation is fairly common for you. If by some design you were good at playing chess/ painting, interested in language and/ or history, hopeful to start a school or a hotel, your middle-class father/ mother would shout on you, your friends would lampoon you, and your grand-mother would start daily fast to urge the gods to change your mind. Then, when it comes to admission, they will even choose which stream is good for you, because there is great market for it. Failure to do so, is to fail your parents in life.

Thanks to the Indian government's tyrannical control of education, it is hard to change the way schools operate and how students learn. Even today, government meddles in education, and would not even allow top-ranked foreign universities in India. This has produced such students, for whom learning is within the bounds of textbooks, within the walls of a school (or worse, a tution class) and within limits of religion.

And Maha wants to explore how to enhance schools by introducing intervention programs, with various real-life activities added to school curriculum. More power to her !

.

Indian and American Education System: a comparison - III

2010-04-11T03:24:00.007+05:30

This is second part of my questionnaire, you can read earlier part 1 and part 2 for a background. Here we will consider remaining questions and their answers.

[ In the next post, I will use all these answers in designing my own education institution, along with a proposal of an education system based on liberal-arts set up.]

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare Physics group in India (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

My Summary:

Teaching styles are a matter of appropriate training and experience of faculty. In general, faculty in US is better trained, with more incentives. Faculty are active in research and bring their research problems to their classes, providing first-hand access for students to research problems. Profs bring in their own experience and knowledge beyond books, courses therefore carry more weight.

The exams are rigorous and students put in a lot of effort for their grades. Students are treated with respect and trust, which students return. If students ask questions, point out flaws, it is appreciated. Student feedback is taken seriously, and provides vital input to teaching methodology and efforts. This is all done concious

The support staff is excellent too. Moreover, there is very little paper pushing and delay due to administrative overhead, bane of Indian system.

Facilities are many-folds better than India, of course, that comes with appropriate investments. Technology is ubiquitous, and is put to a good use. Everyone answers emails within 24 hours.

==============================

5) how were the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

While some courses depended only on the Profs self made notes and experience, others depended on books. Course activities range from assignments, seminars to projects; these elements are flexible. Prof decides to hold an exam or otherwise, and which elements weigh how much. Usually course assignments were weekly, carry a lot of weight and can not be copied. They also kept students up to date on material taught.

Courses are generally well structured, with a mix of both theory and application. Class interaction is very much encouraged (read summary of earlier question above). Lab work and exercises are an important part of the syllabus.

====================================

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

My summary:

Professors are open to dialogue and discussions are encouraged. Students are expected to ask questions and discuss with profs. Classes were not compulsory, but material was taught in such a good manner that classroom interaction was valued very highly.

There is a lot of emphasis on self work.: reading background stuff, latest research etc Students take their homework and assignments seriously. There is no copying unlike in India. In fact, given research-based assignments, it is hard to google and find answers. Any copy attempts is dealt with severely.

Peer grading enabled students not only to evaluate other submissions but also to appreciate different ways of solving the same problem. Some of the courses had project components that were entirely student evaluated.

=======================================

7) if you had to remodel Indian system, would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

My summary:

Reduce class sizes (hire more faculty)
Increase electives and choices for students (less rigid pattern of education)
Encourage faculty research, make them connect students with their work.
Let faculty decide courses' learning goals, teaching and grading methodologies.
Faculty performance review, sincere student feedback.
Thorough teaching, flexible grading and strict compliance of anti-copy rules.
Make courses more experience/ research oriented (not theory only)
Respect students, encourage academic discussions in classroom and outside, and make their life easier with less admin overheads.
Introduce TA system, encourage peer learning inside and outside the classroom.

Read replies yourself for more.

===============================================

--AN--

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare Indian Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

I took three courses, the faculty for which were as follows :

Professor A : Very bookish, used to put up lecture notes *and* then write almost exactly the same stuff on the blackboard, very little attempt at intuitive teaching. :(

Professor B : New prof from MIT, teaching a course for the first time, enthusiastic, and tried to be helpful, but was kind of erratic - didn't explain some topics well. Nevertheless, this course was enjoyable as a whole.

Professor C : The prof. who adopted the real-world kind of teaching approach I described earlier. Very good, the only complaint I had was, he graded horribly in a class of 20..still I believe that is mostly irrelevant

Now I guess almost all of these could be found in any other research group. One thing I did *not* find (sadly) was an improvement in *everyone's* teaching styles. So I guess that shows that as far as taught courses are concerned, the teaching has quirks almost everywhere.

As regards labs, there is little I can say, as the facilities here are far more numerous than any we had in India (not necessarily more advanced, only more opportunity to use them) As regards support staff, they are excellent here, and there is little of the paper-pushing and forms in triplicate mentality that seems to pervade a lot of the administrative thinking at xxxx.

5) how was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

Aside from working in a lab, I didn't have any labs per se this semester. One of our courses contained a final project instead of a final exam, and it tested us quite a bit on the material covered, while managing to remain interesting.

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

The part which I found was slightly different from India (I'm assuming that expectations such as a proper understanding of theory, etc. are common factors everywhere) was that student-professor interaction was expected to be at a far higher level than usual. The office hours (chamber consultation hours) were expected to be used to the fullest.

7) if you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

One of the things I mentioned, and would like to mention again, is that the system at xxxx, consisting of assignments timed at 15-day intervals at max, seemed to work out better for me. Here, there is a weekly system of homeworks for almost each course, and if you take 3 theory-intensive courses (as I did this sem) it is a struggle to keep it going, leaving less time to actually ponder over the theory.

Now, as regards ideas if I had to remodel xxxx, I might do the following :

- Reduce class size, and increase the number of courses that can be taken as electives. As I mentioned earlier, EE student who are sure about their future work probably might not need to take things like MechSol, or even, say, Principles of Management for that matter (our final exam of PoM was a joke due to some people copying rampantly). Unless it is absolutely essential to the fundamental nature of the degree, it should be the student's choice whether he/she wants to take it or not.

- Increase collaboration with other colleges in the area as regards projects, research, etc. I have seen some stellar projects during Quark made by people from GEC. Also, apparently (according to Axxx) we have MoUs with universities all the way upto MIT which allow exchange programs, etc. which have never been used. These could be used to their fullest extent.

- (Slightly controversial, but decided to mention it anyway :p) Stop expanding immediately. Until xxxx campus has been raised to the level of xxxx in terms of all research groups, increasing number of campuses will only serve to widen the perceived disparity between the campuses, and will ultimately lead to isolation of the graduates of these campuses as of a distinct level from xxxx Pxxxxx. (Thankfully that did not happen for our batch during MS admissions.)

if you don't mind, i would like to know about these issues from your other friends and colleagues (from xxxx or elsewhere in India). can you forward this email?

I will try to ask interested people and then forward it to them. That being said, there are very few people who are genuinely interested in furthering education in India as such,
=================================================

--NI--

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

The xxxx Physics Group is probably still among the best set of people I have interacted with. One thing different here is the ubiquitous use of technology. Professors and staff alike usually answer email immediately, (worst case within 24 hours) and are very open and encouraging. Feedback provided by students is very serious - there are rating for each instructor for each course. This provides a good way to check the quality of teaching, as a consistently low performance must be acted upon. It also provides teachers an opportunity to refine their approach. Again this is online and anonymous.

5) how was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

Grad courses are usually very project heavy, while undergrad ones will have a little more emphasis on exams. On an average, CMU courses will have 35-40% project, 15-20% labs/assignments and the rest for exams. What matters most - that depends on an individual as to what he/she is looking to learn. For a single individual, it might be different from course to course. I am focussing on learning various tools, techniques and softwares that I might use anywhere in the future.

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

Yes very much so. Class interaction is very much encouraged. Grad students will have a lot of emphasis on self work. Reading background stuff, latest research etc.

7) if you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

1) Frequent reviews of syllabus to keep content state-of-the-art.

2) More flexibilities

3) Review of performance of faculty.

=========================================================

--NC--

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare xxxx Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

The faculty was, in general, very good. The thing I liked was the emphasis on rigor in theory, followed up by exercises that gave a taste of practical applications. I believe this approach would greatly enhance the approach of teaching at xxxx, which is already at a good level.

Also, I think some of the courses at xxxx (this is with regard to my experience of courses in EE) would have been better served if the exams were more challenging, with a commensurate leniency in grading, as opposed to general run-of-the-mill questions with stricter grading. Open-book tests at xxxx were a concept that I greatly admired, though in my later years, many courses did not have this component.

At Georgia Tech, we had a weekly seminar in the DSP Group, where a Professor or PhD student would explain an aspect of their ongoing research. This was helpful in giving students an idea of the cutting-edge research going on and also gave them an insight into what a particular Professor was working on. I guess maybe having something similar at xxxx would help in giving students an idea of whom they can talk to regarding taking up projects such as a COP/LOP/SOP.

5) how was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

As I mentioned during my answers to the previous questions, the courses were generally well structured, with a mix of both theory and application, which was reflected in the exercises/assignments and exams. I think the xxxx system is also very good with respect to the continuous evaluation, as opposed to one final exam carrying all the weightage in terms of grades; however, I think a assignments/HW component in the courses at xxxx would be something to consider - perhaps we could have 2 midterms, assignments and a Comprehensive Exam instead of the 3 midterms and Compre.

A project component in the courses was also something that appealed to me and could be something to consider too, in courses where it would be feasible.

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

Students were expected to turn in good efforts on the HW assignments, following which (in some subjects) there was peer grading. This enabled the students not only to evaluate other submissions but also to appreciate different ways of solving the same problem. Some of the courses had project components that were entirely student evaluated. Also, the Professors always welcomed insights on various problems from students and were open to dialogue discussing topics more in depth than was covered in the class. Thus, students learned from both the Professor and each other, and this fostered deeper and quicker understanding of subject matter.

7) if you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

I think I will glean some points from my answers to your other questions for this one, as I already mentioned some of my thoughts with regard to improving xxxx in those questions.

- Having more HW assignments, well spaced throughout the semester, is beneficial as one is constantly kept on one's toes and challenged to go beyond what is covered in the lectures.
- Giving a real-world feel to the course, through challenging assignments or exam questions will be beneficial in expanding the student's understanding of the course and bridging the gap between theory and practice to an extent. In my field, as in many others, MATLAB simulations are an excellent way of doing this.
- Making exams more challenging, while not putting undue stress on students about their grade. As I said, perhaps a few questions on an exam can be out-of-the-way, forcing students to apply their minds.
- Encouraging student discussion and dialogue to enhance understanding of the subject. Maybe having a weekly seminar wherein students take turns in giving talks about various topics can be an idea to think about. I know some student groups, including our Astronomy Club at xxxx, incorporated this, but it can also be a feature of senior-level courses undertaken in the 4th year. Students can be exposed to research papers and literature surveys, which would benefit them should they choose to go to graduate school.

Having said all this, I believe the curriculum at xxxx is definitely one of its strong points, together with the concept of continuous evaluation. Many colleges elsewhere in India do not have these strong points. Also, the idea of xxxxxxx School to give relevant industry experience is a big plus. All in all, I believe xxxx has a great system, which can of course be evaluated and improved to be up-to-date and rigorous.

==========================================================

--AD--

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare xxxx Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

The main difference between the faculty that I saw here and in xxxx (not necessarily the Physics group, since I have not taken many courses with professors in this group) was that all the professors here are actively involved in research. If xxxx could invest more on research, it would go a long way in bridging the gap between Indian and the American education system.

5) how was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

The labs and exercises are an important part of the syllabus. It's through these that I did most of my studying. Doing the homeworks and labs sincerely removed the need to study for tests later on as we understood all the content while working on the exercises. There's absolutely no rote learning here and that's the thing that mattered to me the most. Another important part of most courses is the class project, where students are encouraged to work on something new and interesting. Projects proved to be a very good learning experience.

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

Yes, the classrooms are very interactive and informal and students are encouraged to participate in it. The more questions we ask and more discussions we have, the more we all learn.

7) if you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

I think that xxxx is in a much better place than most other academic institutions in India. With a few changes, it would be as good as the American ones. The main change I would make is more emphasis on research by faculty and hence getting students more interested in research. The second thing would be to change the curriculum so that it emphasizes less on rote learning but focuses more on applying concepts to practical situations through relevant lab work and home work.

=========================================================

--OP--

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare xxxx Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

I have not interacted with the Physics Group here at all.

5) how was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

The striking difference between Indian universities and the ones here w.r.t student activity in a class comes in the assignments. Assignments are taken very seriously here irrespective of the weightage they have , somehow...no one copies, everyone attempts and works it out on their own. In India (even in xxxx), just because its not an exam, assignments are taken v liberally. People copy without guilt and the one or two bright ones are more than happy to share their work.The assignments here are very well designed to enhance the learning process. Especially for the graduate courses, I have observed that at least 50% of a course's learning takes place through solving the assignments.

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

Not completely sure what you are referring to, but students are generally expected to contribute to the research being pursued by the professors of their department. Students make very solid, hands on contributions. Sometimes, the Professor vaguely proposes an idea, its the student who makes a detailed design and implements it. But then again, I guess I'm speaking only about graduate students.

7) if you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

a. Make the university more research oriented. Thoroughly involve students in the research.

b. Make the grading system tougher. I got away with As in a bunch of courses where I learnt very little. This really reduces the motivation to learn (esp in xxx --- India --- where there are tons of exciting things to do instead of studying).

(I can see a 19 yr old xxxxx relaxing in a xxxx lawn thoroughly disappointed at her future self suggesting something so horrendous, "How did I turn into you?" she asks!)

I do not know how to give the suggestion of Assignments, because even if very challenging ones were assigned, I would not know how to inculcate the culture of spending time on them and honestly attempting them.

_____________________________________________________________________

--IM--

4) how was faculty and support staff? can you compare xxxx Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

It does not matter how many degrees the professor has earned and we can never really compare. Each professor has a varied approach, there is every kind of professor some extremely knowlegable, some who have earned degrees but not very student-friendly to work with. On the whole, what I think is the difference between the faculty here and faculty in xxxx is that, every professor here is very very actively working on a bunch of projects wheras in xxxx not all of them are involved in continuing research activity or atleast the students are not given a chance to participate in their research. It is of great help for the students to work with professors and real-time projects. Most of the professors here are associated with companies and real-time projects which is just not the case in xxxx

5) how was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

Syllabus as i have mentioned involves in assignments and projects very very frequently( this can be the case with only georgia tech because tech is considered to be very toughest and time-consuming). The students are always given a chance to participate in the professors research and use it as a class project as well. Also, the quality of projects are quite different. As I did in xxx, most of them in the class google it and get almost the same answer just tweak a little. But here the projects are modules of new ideas which cannot be googled, we might just get an idea from google(which also is mostly not). They also make sure that the disciplinary code is very very strict which ensures students dont copy. It is very easy to copy in xxxx. These projects here happened to help me quite a lot. It gives you a hang of the concept.

6) what was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?

Not much difference in this aspect, according to me.

7) if you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

Change the entire course curriculum to include more practical implementations and more programming.

I would love to see the professors having tight-relations with companies and I would expect the professors to be in continuous learning phase so that they can come up with interesting projects and suggest students about the various opportunities and areas to learn and grow in. The students will have to be given a chance to work with the professors on these real-time projects, participate in conferences and be actively involved in the present happenings in their field of study.

I guess this is what I have observed from one semester that I have spent here. I began to love this system now (though a lot of cribbing goes on and on everyday). Hopefully, this helps education level in xxxx to raise. It is very nice of you to take time to analyze the weaknesses and possible improvements to the Indian Education System as a whole and particularly in xxxx

========================================================

--KA--

4) How was faculty and support staff? can you compare xxxx Physics group (I know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? We were a good group, I believe. We can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and I would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... Again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.

4. As mentioned before, I believe the 'approach' is important. Students trust teachers, when teachers themselves trust their courses and subjects. When a teacher loves what he is teaching (and more importantly effectively communicates this fact) then a student loves the course too. Here teachers are liberal, easy; a student can leave the class when he wants to, ask AS many questions as he wants to (without fear that he will be snubbed or ridiculed), submit an assignment a day late if he has a valid excuse, and so on. Teachers here are more like friends (like you were to us, but like almost no other Prof at xxxx - India- is) and understood and most importantly RESPECTED students. I believe that is the most important thing which lacks at xxxx (India). Students are treated like thieves and thugs and almost all of us will agree to that. Working in a lab late (even if on a student's own project) should be easy and not so bureaucratic like India. It is then we will see real innovation. After lab hours in PHY123 ("Harvard"), I would sit with some undergrads in the lab who were working on developing a new protocol for the iPods. In a few days they did it, and even presented some papers on that.

In terms of knowledge base, the faculty here was definitely MUCH MUCH better than that India. I say that because the course came out of papers, of the "other" knowledge of Profs and not out of books. Profs would start with stories about what they'd done in their UGs, bring those papers to share with us, to show the real innovation outside classrooms. Discussions were encouraged immensely. And most importantly, these Professors prepare before coming to the class, unlike most of the ones at xxxx (India) I studied under. I wouldn't want to name them, but even the best of the Profs did so many mistakes in the class.

Just between you and me, as an example, Prof. xxxx knew nothing about what she was teaching. When I used to point out her mistakes (in a not-so subtle way) she'd get so irked. She threw me out of her class once for acting "over smart." I lost all the will to come to the class anymore or even learn the subject. I could have taught the course better than her! Of course I made an A in the course, but the whole experience left me very bitter. If the same case had happened here (which did) the Profs are so understanding of their mistakes, and say sorry a million times, to actually make the student feel sorry for pointing it out (in a nice sort of way!) That helps because the next time the student is eager to learn more out of the course from the same Professor. The exact same thing that happened between Prof. xxxx (India), happened between me and Prof. yyyy (Man) or Prof zzzzz (Woman, both in India) to name some.

5) How was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? How did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?

5. Each course had its own structure. While some depended only on the Profs self made notes and experience, others depended on books. Almost always we didn't even have a prescribed text book (which I found unnerving initially!) but which worked better in the end because we focused more on what was going in the class room. Some courses are seminar courses too, but I didn't take any of them. Almost each course has weekly or bi-weekly HWs, and some of them had final take home exams too. One of them had a midterm group presentation and a final paper to be written. HWs since cannot be copied (unlike India) had to be done (they carried a huge percentage) and since they covered everything taught till that week, updated every student with what happened in the course till that date. The final projects were VERY intensive and often we didn't sleep for days! Also, please notice the file attached (I believe you've seen this before though.) This is a reply from the Prof for our midterm presentation. Such customized replies went to 12 other groups. This Prof. is perhaps the most famous professor in her field existing today and yet she put in the time and effort to do this. This is what impresses us as students; the Prof putting in as much work as the students (you did so for us in MT1 lab too.)

6) What was expected from students? Learning is a 2-way street, I believe, did you find something similar?

6. Students were expected to ask questions, lots of questions! The class was like a chatter box and students who didn't ask questions were mostly the ones who were asked questions BY the Professor. It kept us on our toes! Everyone was expected to attend the classes (and everyone did) because unless you attended the class you wouldn't get anything out of the slides, and you wouldn't be able to do your HWs. There was no compulsory attendance though. Also to make students attend the classes, the teachers did not compromise by giving questions from what is taught in class, but by teaching so, that the student would HAVE to attend the class. No surprise quizzes (which I personally believe didn't serve a single purpose in xxxx (india) since I never attended them and got A's in most of my courses.) and even if there were quizzes they were not "marked." Imagine getting all the quiz papers and the Prof. right then and there picking up them, not mentioning the name of the students who wrote them, and discussing what was wrong or right in their approaches. That way the topic was discussed then and there with students "actually" learning rather than caring more about their marks.

7) If you had to remodel xxxx, what would you do? Detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

7. Whoa. xxxx Would go topsy-turvy then.
a) Introduce TAs who are available to take a weekly "session" to review what was done in the class and answer students' queries. All students learn differently. Some are comfortable in a classroom setting with the Prof, others in a classroom setting with another student teaching them, and yet others who like to be alone while discussing questions. Introducing such students who are half way between a Prof and a student would be a very wise idea.
b) Introduce a MUCH stronger and centralized feedback system for Profs and courses. Students get to rate them back on various fields and that keeps the Profs on their toes. This also helps students decide on a particular elective course for the next semester.
c) Go easy on students. Respect them because they are because of who your institution runs. There are legitimate problems sometimes, and that needs to be understood. Each of them is different, and learns differently. I can remember so so so many instances of teachers shouting at students for no mistake of theirs. Stop that, there are other ways to tell them that they are wrong.
d) Focus on research. Make publishing at least one paper in an international journal mandatory. If we as students could publish papers only by our own work, then our Profs should too. That's how we will respect them too.
e) Get a larger non-teaching staff and delegate the administrative work to them. Teachers are already loaded with work and courses; this would give them more time to do research too.
f) Update the courses and not just the course text-books. Take ideas, information from the latest papers, discuss them with students.
g) In continuation, fascinate the students by giving hands-on demonstrations (if possible), reading excerpts out of papers (even if 50 years old!), talk about personalities who've existed in the area (for example Tesla, when teaching Magnetic fields!) and so on. Make it fun!
h) Pay more to the faculty. The reasons are understandable; better faculty, better …
i) Make the academic/other procedures for students a little bit more easier. It shouldn't be a pain to take a leave; the students are grown ups, or to simply audit a course or take an elective!

Indian and American Education System: a comparison - II

2010-03-15T02:24:00.008+05:30

My first three questions

In my previous post I had requested a few, whom I was fortunate to interact with earlier, to compare their US experience with Indian education system. I had asked them some specific questions, and their feedback.

In this post I will compile and analyse their answers to three questions in the questionnaire.

1) did you take any courses that were similar to those in India? if so, can you compare what changed for better (and worse, of course).

[This was to compare two institutions directly, wherever possible]

My summary : In a US university, depth is valued more than breadth, so focus on a few fundamentals. Fundamentals are valued over ability to remember and calculate. There is a lot more rigor and students are given a lot of homework, which they take seriously unlike in India. There are also programming (MatLab etc.) exercises; laboratory projects; research papers to read/ work out; and research-related lab work to complement class-room learning.

2) were there any other courses (Logic or Astronomy) which you wish you had encountered before? perhaps, then you would remove some other courses from Indian curriculum, which ones?
[This is to understand what students desire in terms of background/ basic courses]

My summary : Rather than specific courses, what is (rightly, in my opinion) demanded is flexibility to choose from courses at an early stage. Also, the choice should be from a wider pool of courses, which allows for all branches to interconnect. Let the student decide which courses s/he wants to do. Fundamental courses in Math give a solid background, but only when taught with real-life examples, perhaps we should make teachers collaborate in a classroom. Plus, there should be arts courses, which would make it all-round development, of course given capable teachers (not making the director teach literature course, zilch of a background in that).

3) did you find any course very much enjoyable in your stay? which ones, and why? of course you will like some topics more than others, but it is the "learning experience" from a course that counts for me.

[This is to understand what does a course contain to make it students' favorite]

My summary : In US, a teacher would make students work with real-life examples: learning something, construct it yourself (learning 'amplifiers', make one). This means quality teaching, only a skilled teacher knows what to add to the course, and what activities to be carried out in what measure. Also, such a teacher would have to be active researcher to get the feel of the latest, esp. given the quick changes in "state of the art" of engineering and sciences.

Here are students' responses for you to read directly.

=======================================================
1) did you take any courses that were similar to those in India? if so, can you compare what changed for better (and worse, of course).

----AN----

I took Introduction to Probability Theory (which is a 500 level course), which was similar to the Probability and Statistics Course that I took in India. The major difference was breadth v/s depth. I'd say (in India) we covered a wider range of material in the course, but mainly without mathematical proofs. On the other hand, in the course here, relatively less material was covered topic-wise, but whatever was covered, was covered completely, with proofs for each relevant theorem

---NI---

in the first sem, I was a bit bull-headed, and I did not take courses which I though I had covered. However, now I realize that a course here is probably twice as much worth as one in India. from the point of view of using softwares.

There is a lot more emphasis on assignments which need a significant amount of work/effort/thinking. There is also probably a lot more industry relevance. I think syllabi here are updated more frequently here, and that makes a lot of difference. This semester I am taking a undergrad course which will teach me formally the things that I tried out in my projects in India. Formal knowledge makes a significant difference to the effort required to reach project goals, I believe.

--- NC ---

Some of the courses that I took in DSP and Communications involved some matter that had been taught in India too. The major difference that I observed was the stress on mathematical rigor, which was also reflected in the difficulty level of the problems assigned for HW. Further, the focus was on gaining a clear understanding of the fundamentals, and learning was facilitated through simulation examples via MATLAB, which made the subject more interesting.

--- AD ---

I have taken a number of courses here that are similar to India. I found that here the professors give more importance to strongly nailing in the fundamental concepts. This method is complemented by a good amount of homework and laboratory work that is meant to help us understand the concepts better. I feel that I have learned a lot more from the courses here than I did in India.

--- OP---

I was TA of an undergraduate course which was the equivalent of Digital Design and Computer Architecture in India. From what I know

a) The computer architecture part was not given any focus / importance in India. It is taught very thoroughly here, the examinations even had questions involving the redesign of the micro architecture of a basic pipeline as per a new instruction set specified by the professor and other involving choosing cache sizes for a specific application. In India, we only vaguely touched upon pipelines and caches as mere concepts.

b) In India, the practicals for the course ( basic VHDL programming, hooking up simple logic circuits on bread boards etc) was a part of the coursework. At this university, there are no lab sessions or programming assignments for the course at all. All of the practical aspects have been bundled into a separate course which may or may not be taken in another sem.

--- IM ---

I have taken a similar networking class to what we had in India. There we had mostly theoretical questions based on it. But in US we had a couple of projects where we could practically implement what we are learning. This is one of the major things that is lacking in our education. We read a book, ace the exam and get an A and an year later we dont really remember the basics if we do not go into that field anymore.

--- KA---

I took two courses very similar to India. PHY123 (commonly called the Art of Electronics, taught by Paul Horowitz and Tom Hayes) similar to MT1, ES1 and Advanced VLSI Design, similar to Analog and Digital VLSI Design (ADVD). Here are some thoughts:

PHY123: The course was simply outstanding! The first hour of the course was spent in discussing a chapter from Paul's book (Art of Electronics) and the rest 4-5 hours (yes!) working in the lab. The course did not require students to write lab reports (which was simply great, because according to me lab reports don't serve much purpose except for learning how to copy) but the HWs given at the end of each class covered all that was done in the lab. Hence one HAD to do the labs to get the HW questions right. Of course, the HW questions were novel and were generated over years (the course has been running for more than 30 years.) The course is immensely popular at MIT and the class was divided half and half between MIT and Harvard. The main point about the course which cannot be stressed more is the fact that it was FUN. I believe this is what we lack when we do courses in India; they are rote. You get a book, see what has to be done in the lab and do it. While here, you play with circuits, there are demonstrations (like how to send sound using just an LED and decode and play it on a speaker, etc) already prepared by the Professors before the students enter the classroom. The handouts/quizzes are handed on a mini-train which travels on the table and reaches every student, and so on. These might sound naive, but I've SEEN these things work. After every 20mins in the first hour, students were given a 5 min break since the attention span of a human averages over there, and so on. I could go on writing about the course in fact! :)

Advanced VLSI Design: The course was an eyeopener. Topics were taught from scratch, and students were not assumed to know anything. Very intensive classes too, with HWs from book, but otherwise information (updated!) was given. VLSI is an ever changing field, and instead of sticking to a book, students were made to read papers, comment on them etc. Each week an assignment was given which started from scratch design and culminated in students learning extensive use of Cadence softwares (which is EXTREMELY necessary for EE grads and not taught in India.)
==========================================================

2) were there any other courses (Logic or Astronomy) which you wish you had encountered before? perhaps, then you would remove some other courses from India curriculum, which ones?

My summary : Rather than specific courses, what is (rightly, in my opinion) demanded is flexibility to choose from courses at an early stage. Also, the choice should be from a wider pool of courses, which allows for all branches to interconnect. Let the student decide which courses s/he wants to do. Fundamental courses in Math give a solid background, but only when taught with real-life examples, perhaps we should make teachers collaborate in a classroom. Plus, there should be arts courses, which would make it all-round development, of course given capable teachers (not making the director teach literature course, zilch of a background in that).

--- AN---

If I were given the choice, I might consider removing Mechanics of Solids for Electrical Engineers, and perhaps replace it with a course teaching Object Oriented Programming, perhaps through Python. One thing you find here is that you're almost expected to know OOP (or rather, it isn't a minus point if you don't, but a big plus if you do...you can get started on projects etc. much more quickly if you know C++ or Java)

--- NI---

One thing I would encourage in India is the flexibilities offered here. It is not important whether the degree name is EnI or EEE, I should be allowed to do more courses of my interest rather than all the CDCs. Maybe there can be different 'tracks' like Control Systems, Systems, Signal Processing etc. You get the idea.. The Maths courses that India has - and it has a lot - are really helpful in providing background [Asgekar: "And I always found Math classrooms empty"]

--- NC ---

I wish I had understood the importance of Linear Algebra in Signal Processing. When we were taught this course in the 1st year at India came across as a relatively abstract, difficult though interesting course, but I believe we were not given enough real-world perspective. [Asgekar: "Read my comment above"]

Further, I also wish that I had done a more rigorous course on random signals/random processes. It was covered in 1 chapter in the Communication Systems course in India. but the material was covered very quickly, I believe it has enough content to merit a separate course.

Also, I know it is difficult to increase the flexibility, but I think it would help if the Compulsory Discipline Courses in India had a wider scope and students could choose from a pool of courses, as against the compulsory 8 courses that we had to do in our 3rd year. In my case, I would have rather done a course on Random Signals than, say, Power Electronics or VLSI Design.

--- AD ---

Actually, I think the Indian curriculum was very good and I wouldn't drop any courses from it. The method of tackling the courses is what needs to be changed a little bit. I did feel it would have been useful to include Operating Systems course in the ECE required course work.

--- OP---

There are many interesting courses to choose from at universities in U.S.A. Though I wondered sometimes why Indian Univ had a limited choice of courses, I felt that the idea may not be practical considering both the smaller number of students and the fewer degrees offered. We only had Engineering and Sciences as the programs offered. On the other hand, universities here offer hundreds of degrees ranging from Archeology to Creative Writing to Law. Hence any course would find a good number of students wanting to take it, this may not be the case in India.

--- IM ---

I am extremely unhappy about the number of electives that are offered in India. Undergrad is a time for people to know what they are interested in and shape their career in. How can they just restrict us to a couple of electives? I would have loved to take foreign languages, give a shot at photography. There is not much importance given to art in India, may be it is not related to our college alone, but Art and psychology and public affairs are all extremely important to the universities here.

--- KA---

2) Instead of removing a course from Indian curriculum (MT2 can be removed!) improving them is a better option. Courses like CP2 do nothing to teach much except know how pointers work. Many many more assignments should be given at India.

==========================================================

3) did you find any course very much enjoyable in your stay? which ones, and why? of course you will like some topics more than others, but it is the "learning experience" from a course that counts for me.

My summary : In US, a teacher would make students work with real-life examples: learning something, construct it yourself (learning 'amplifiers', make one). This means quality teaching, only a skilled teacher knows what to add to the course, and what activities to be carried out in what measure. Also, such a teacher would have to be active researcher to get the feel of the latest, esp. given the quick changes in "state of the art" of engineering and sciences.

--- AN---

Well, I liked a course on Coding Theory that I took. The professor in charge of the course explained the theory very lucidly and with real-world examples of codes. In general, he always tried to adhere to the "how do we construct an *actual* code with these principles, and model real-world error probabilities into it, etc" approach.

--- NC ---

Three courses that I really enjoyed at ... were:

1) Digital Communication (basic M-ary communication system design and performance analysis in AWGN channels)
2) Digital Processing of Speech Signals (speech production models, analysis techniques and applications such as coding, recognition)
3) Harmonic Analysis and Signal Processing (wavelets and time-frequency representations, approximation theory, best basis and sparse approximation, statistical estimation, compression, inverse problems)

I learned a lot through these courses, due to a combination of skilled teaching, well-planned coursework and insightful assignments/projects. Again, I believe that learning was greatly enhanced by incorporating extensive MATLAB simulations into the coursework.

--- AD ---

The best course that I have done here is VLSI Principles. The course content, homeworks and lab work were designed to give a thorough understanding of digital chip design. The highlight of the course was that it is superbly oriented with the current semiconductor industry, giving us hands-on experience with state-of-the-art tools and designs through lab assignments.

--- OP---

I loved the course Digital VLSI Circuits Design. The course project involved doing the physical layout of an entire micro controller. It was extremely challenging, but also very very useful. The classes were also very impressive because of the professor's teaching style, he often used his incredible knowledge of "how its done in the industry" in lectures and shared the simple intuitions he had about various concepts.

--- IM ---

The course I liked the most is Operating Systems and Image Processing. I liked Operating Systems because we have gained indepth knowledge of how things work, very low-level. We were introduced to working with shell scripts though it was not included in the course curriculum( which by the way has to drastically improve to include more practical coding and programming, which a normal college in India has but unfortunately we dont). Image Processing was interesting because I could apply whatever I have learnt by working on a project extensively. The charm of a topic is only reliased when we work on it and see what it is all about. I think our course curriculum gives more importance to include theory of as many topics as possible but that does not help in any way if we cant use it. They should try testing the students on projects more than on tests.

--- KA---

3)See answer 1. Apart from that, a course at MIT called Low Power VLSI Design was very very useful. The course was finely broken up into topics required for Low Power Design without overwhelming the students. The HWs were made challenging but not so much that a student would be dissuaded. The course culminated with a project which covered EVERYTHING taught in it.

Hussain and Secularism in India: Hilda Raja's email to Hindu's N Ram

2010-03-07T02:12:00.003+05:30

I admire how neatly Ms. Hilda Raja puts points across to the left-wing media and intelligentia. Hats off to her !!!

letter to the editor-in-chief of The Hindu

March 3, 2010

I have taken time to write this to you Ram- for the simple reason that we have known you for so many years- you and The Hindu bring back happy memories. Please take what I am putting down as those that come from an agonized soul. You know that I do not mince words and what I have to say I will-I call a spade a spade- now it is too late for me to learn the tricks of being called a ‘secularist’ if that means a bias for, one, and a bias against, another.

Hussain is now a citizen of Qatar-this has generated enough of heat and less of light. Qatar, you know better than me, is not a country which respects democracy or freedom of expression. Hussain says he has complete freedom-I challenge him to paint a picture of Mohammed fully clad.
There is no second opinion that artists have the Right of Freedom of expression. Is such a right restricted only to Hussain? Will that right not flow to Dan Brown-why was his film-Da Vinci Code not screened? Why was Satanic Verses banned-does Salman Rushdie not have that freedom of expression? Similarly why is Taslima hunted and hounded and why fatwas have been issued on both these writers? Why has Qatar not offered citizenship to Taslima? In the present rioting in Shimoga in Karnataka against the article Taslima wrote against the tradition of burqua which appeared in the Out Look in Jan 2007. No body protested then either in Delhi or in any other part of the country; now when it reappears in a Karnataka paper there is rioting. Is there a political agenda to create a problem in Karnataka by the intolerant goons? Why has the media not condemned this insensitivity and intolerance of the Muslims against Taslima’s views? When it comes to the Sangh Parivar it is quick to call them goons and intolerant etc. Now who are the goons and where is this tolerance and sensitivity?

Regarding Hussain’s artistic freedom it seems to run unfettered in an expression of sexual perversion only when he envisages the Hindu Gods and Goddesses. There is no quarrel had he painted a nude woman sitting on the tail of a monkey. The point is he captioned it as Sita. Nobody would have protested against the sexual perversion and his orientatation to sexual signs and symbols. But would he dare to caption it as ‘Fatima enjoying in Jannat with animals’?
Next example-is the painting of Saraswati copulating with a lion. Here again his perversion is evident and so is his intent. Even that lets concede cannot be faulted-each one’s sexual orientation is each one’s business I suppose. But he captioned it as Saraswati. This is the problem. It is Hussain’s business to enjoy in painting his sexual perversion. But why use Saraswati and Sita for his perverted expressions? Use Fatima and watch the consequences. Let the media people come to his rescue then. Now that he is in a country that gives him complete freedom let him go ahead and paint Fatima copulating with a lion or any other animal of his choice. And then turn around and prove to India the Freedom of expression he enjoys in Qatar.

Talking about Freedom of Expression- this is the Hussain who supported Emergence-painted Indira Gandhi as Durga slaying Jayaprakas Narayan. He supported the jailing of artists and writers. Where did this Freedom of Expression go? And you call him secularist? Would you support the jailing of artists and writers Ram –would you support the abeyance of the Constitution and all that we held sacred in democracy and the excessiveness of Indira Gandhi to gag the media-writers-political opponents? Tell me honesty, why does Hussain expect this Freedom when he himself did not support others with the same freedom he wants? And the media has rushed to his rescue. Had it been a Ram who painted such obnoxious, degrading painting- the reactions of the media and the elite ‘secularists’ would have been different; because there is a different perception/and index of secularism when it comes to Ram- and a different perception/and index of secularism when it comes to Rahim/Hussain.

It brings back to my mind an episode that happened to The Hindu some years ago. You had a separate weekly page for children with cartoons, quizzes, and with poems and articles of school children. In one such weekly page The Hindu printed a venerable bearded man-fully robed with head dress, mouthing some passages of the Koran-trying to teach children. It was done not only in good faith but as a part of inculcating values to children from the Koran. All hell broke loose. Your office witnessed goons who rushed in-demanded an apology-held out threats. In Ambur, Vaniambadi and Vellore the papers stands were burned-the copies of The Hindu were consigned to the fire. A threat to raise the issue in Parliament through a Private Members Bill was held out-Hectic activities went on- I am not sure of the nature and the machinations behind the scene. But The Hindu next day brought out a public apology in its front page. Where were you Ram? How secular and tolerant were the Muslims?

Well this is of the past-today it is worse because the communal temperature in this country is at a all high-even a small friction can ignite and demolition the country’s peace and harmony. It is against this background that one should view Hussain who is bent on abusing and insulting the Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Respect for religious sentiments, need to maintain peace and harmony should also be part of the agenda of an artist-if he is great. If it is absent then he cannot say that he respects India and express his longing for India.

Let’s face it- he is a fugitive of law. Age and religion are immaterial. What does the media want-that he be absolved by the courts? Even for that he has to appear in the courts-he cannot run away-After all this is the country where he lived and gave expression to his pervert sadist, erotic artistic mind under Freedom of Expression. I simply cannot jump into the bandwagon of the elite ‘secularist’ and uphold what he had done. With his brush he had committed jihad-bloodletting.
The issue is just not nudity- Yes the temples-the frescos in Konarak and Kajhuraho have nude figures-But does it say that they are Sita, Sarswati or any goddesses? We have the Yoni and the Phallus as sacred signs of Life-of Siva and Shakthi-take these icons to the streets, paint them -give it a caption it become vulgar. Times have changed. Even granted that our ancients sculptured and painted naked forms and figures, with a pervert mind to demean religion is no license to repeat that in today’s changed political and social scenario and is not a sign of secularism and tolerance. I repeat there is no quarrel with nudity-painters have time and again found in it the perfection of God’s hand craft.

Let me wish Hussain peace in Qatar-the totalitarian regime with zero tolerance May be he will convince the regime there to permit freedom of expression in word, writing and painting. For this he could start experimenting painting forms and figure of Mohamed the Prophet-and his family And may I fervently wish that the media-especially The Hindu does not discriminate goons-let it not substitute tolerance for intolerance when it comes to Rahim and Antony and another index for Ram.

I hope you will read this in the same spirit that I have written. All the best to you Ram.

Dr Mrs Hilda Raja,
Vadodara

Energy Efficiency and Human Behavior

2010-03-05T14:21:00.001+05:30

As this Ars Technica article mentions, in energy savings it matters more to change people's attitude than basic technology. Current technology, when assisted with proper incentives, can be used by people to lower their energy usage.

What incentives: layered energy costs, tight monitoring of power usage, rewards (subsidies) to those who use energy efficient bulbs/ systems, punishments (taxes) on less efficient systems. Governments are decreed to have this as their main function, instead Indian government focuses on caste-/ religion-based quotas, blanket subsidies to the rich (petrol), criminal waste of tax-payer money supposedly on 'employment of the poor' (NREGA) etc.

Let us see what all can GoI do in this regard:

tax petrol/ diesel
yearly tax on cars depending on their energy/ fuel efficiency (higher tax for SUVs e.g.).
tax fluorescent light bulbs, subsidize efficient ones
tax ACs on yearly basis (pay yearly tax based on their energy usage and efficiency)
offer cash for tree plantation and growing programs
encourage and build public transport (not take bribes from Kinetic/ Honda to encourage 2-wheeler traffic on the road)
subsidize energy efficient cooking ranges (taxes are based on the energy efficiency)
buildings with ecologically friendly structures (more cross-wind, green areas, indoor water cooling, etc.)

and more on these lines.

What are your suggestions in this regard?

Indian and American Education System: a comparison - I

2010-02-12T14:30:00.003+05:30

I have always wondered what would I have been if I had received better educational choices offered in countries such as US. Would I have stuck to just plain Physics, or ventured in Applied Physics, Economics of Education, Medieval Poetry, or even Sports Mechanics and Injury.Instead of listening to insipid lecturers, who did not know difference between Fermions and electrons, I could have spoken to Prof. Levine (MIT) and seen his demonstrations live. Instead of doing my first experiments with telescopes at the age of 22, would I have done some cool supernova observations, derived age of an unknown galaxy or studied planet around a distant star at the age of 17? Possibilities are endless, and I would like to know what exactly did I miss in the class: the attitude of teachers, students, facilities, and of course, aims of learning.

So, I asked a few students from Goa, whom I had incidentally taught Physics and a few other things. These students are now in the US universities, doing some exciting things on their own. I asked them to compare our teaching environment and what they encountered so far in their American colleges.

My questions to them went like this:

Did you take any courses that were similar to those in [our_college] ? if so, can you compare what changed for better (and worse, of course)?
Were there any other courses (Logic or Astronomy) which you wish you had encountered before? perhaps, then you would remove some other courses from [our_college] curriculum, which ones?
Did you find any course very much enjoyable in your stay? which ones, and why? of course you will like some topics more than others, but it is the "learning experience" from a course that counts for me.
How was faculty and support staff? can you compare [our_college] Physics group (i know this bunch the best) with one you saw there? we were a good group, i believe. we can improve hugely in terms of our approach, and i would like to know if you can point out the fault lines... again, i would ask you to stress less on equipment (automated robots or moving screens) than approach, but do write about the over all thing.
How was the syllabus and student activities (exercises, labs, seminars, research)? how did it make a difference, what exactly mattered to you the most?
What was expected from students ? learning is a 2-way street, i believe, did you find something similar?
If you had to remodel [our_college], what would you do? detail 2 things of your own (more if you have time).

They contradicted themselves and repeated themselves, but their answers were surprisingly similar, although words were different and order was jumbled. In my coming posts I will discuss answers to various questions, and my reposte on those answers. After 7 such posts, I will put in my summary posts on this.

If you had to do so, how would you phrased your questions?

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उल्टा गब्बर गाववालों को डांटे !

2010-01-04T00:54:00.002+05:30

Or, how captain of thieves lectures to the looted townsfolk !

This is our prime-minister's (MMS) message :

Terming as "unfortunate" regression in some sectors of Indian science due to red tape and political interference, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday asked scientists to engage with government to liberate it from shackles of "bureaucratism and in-house favouritism".

Hello, "some sectors of Indian science"? The truth is that this phenomenon pervades the entire Indian science, industry and innovation sector. The political class, with the help of the beureaucrats, are looting the innovators, hard-working people. The entire structure is based to make money, so hire those scientists who pay ministers, allow more research funds to those who will share the cut with ministers, and so on. (All know certain cases where appointments were made when money was paid to various places, don't we?) This structure does not allow for clean scientists to survive and go on to make discoveries (and share it with government and 'babu's as a part of copyrights/ patents etc.)

1) Now the onus is on us to "engage with the government"? What is "government" here, the beureaucrats and ministers (and their cronies). What does "engagement" mean, sleep with them or pamper their whims? The "government" is not going to cede power, the PM has to empower a (large) body of scientists, taken broadly from all universities and institutes, to create a new structure. Indian Academy of Sciences is the oldest such body, and he and his government should the first step in inviting the body... The formation is the most crucial step here, if not done properly, it would not make any impact whatsoever: it has to be politically impartial, neutral to gender/ caste/ regional/ subject-field biases.

Holding that time has come to give a "new boost" to science and technology, he asked Indian scientists working abroad to return to the country to convert the "brain drain" to "brain gain".

Why should anyone come back? What guarantee that the structure is never formed? Individuals need incentives to do work, and assurance that when political power shifts, the above step does not get lost.

2) So, the formation and successive framework has to be carried out after a prolonged debate with opposition parties, esp. the major opposition (BJP in particular). This engagement is crucial, this will bring necessary neutrality.

The Prime Minister appealed to scientific institutions to introspect and to propose mechanisms for greater autonomy, including from the government, which could help to improve standards.

Sorry, MMS, this time the onus (of introspection) is squarely on the political class. Take permission from the Italian madam, or the Prince, and start broader reforms, more akeen to the financial reforms you had initiated in 1991. For that, the political class needs to rescind their powers and will to make wanten money from every possible decision.

Noting that the government has declared 2010-2020 as a "decade of innovation", he said, "We cannot continue with business as usual as we need new solutions in many areas to achieve the goals of inclusive and sustainable growth."
He pitched for a strong outward orientation of the innovation eco-system to stimulate innovation to find indigenous solutions for local problems.

Such declaration, esp. by weak governments like India, do not carry much meaning. Tokenism of this kind has hurt us all this while. What is this obfuscation "outward orientation of the innovation eco-system"?

4) To make innovation happen, government has to provide incentives: simple banking/ funding possibilities, easy access to patenting and copy-rights, crucially simpler access to information (using internet). Given recent silly internet banning of "sex" and related material, we can safely forget about information exchange, the most key aspect of innovation and research.

Bottomline: MMS is only making an empty speech, good on words (and he may even understand significance of those), but empty on actions...

Siddhartha : 2010

2010-01-01T06:05:00.001+05:30

I am reading Siddhartha, iconic novel by Herman Hesse. You can find a copy at Project Gutenberg. I believe 2010 will be the year of awakening for me, I have to discover myself, reinvent my cause and start moving forward.

Awakening
When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them.

Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings.

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" And he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!"

Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process."

Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. And it was not long before he walked again, walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.

"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins. Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha."

He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

"How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along. "When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this very day."

In thinking this thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path.

Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: He, who was indeed like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to start his life anew and start again at the very beginning. When he had left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on his path, he also awoke to this realization: "But I am no longer the one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no Brahman any more. Whatever should I do at home and at my father's place? Study? Make offerings? Practise meditation? But all this is over, all of this is no longer alongside my path."

Summerhill Education vs. Standard School Education

2009-12-31T22:38:00.002+05:30

Here is a passage, where Neill explains the difference between his school and standard schools.

Summerhill Education vs. Standard Education

I hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which means to find interest. Education should be a preparation for life. Our culture has not been very successful. Our education, politics and economics lead to war. Our medicines have not done away with disease. Our religion has not abolished usury and robbery. Our boasted humanitarianism still allows public opinion to approve of the barbaric sport of hunting. The advances of the age are advances in mechanism--in radio and television, in electronics, in jet planes. New world wars threaten, for the world’s social conscience is still primitive.

If we feel like questioning today, we can pose a few awkward questions. Why does man seem to have many more disuses than animals have? Why does man hate and kill in war when animals do not? Why does cancer increase? Why are there so many suicides? So many insane sex crimes? Why the hate that is anti-Semitism? Why Negro hating and lynching? Why back- biting and spite? Why is sex obscene and a leering joke? Why is being a bastard a social disgrace? Why the continuance of religions that have long ago lost their love and hope and charity? Why, a thousand whys about our vaunted state of civilized eminence!

I ask these questions because I am by profession a teacher, one who deals with the young. I ask these questions because those so often asked by teachers are the unimportant ones, the ones about school subjects. I ask what earthly good can come out of discussions about French or ancient history or what not when these subjects don’t matter a jot compared to the larger question of life’s natural fulfillment of man’s inner happiness.

Text User Interface using PythonDialog2.7

2009-12-29T06:31:00.004+05:30

I have been struggling to have a simple text user interface to display information, and then change the variables/ settings in a program from command line (while running the program). This all with a user menu and other tools.

It now works with PythonDialog 2.7, with only 4 days of complete work ! Here are a couple of screenshots, this is pretty cool.

First the default read of the data file and its parameters: Page 1

I can change the telescope name (to correct value "WSRT")

And once I press RETURN key in the window above, the file is modified:

More code and pics will come soon. This is the time to take this program forward...

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Summerhill: Happy School

2009-12-07T00:17:00.002+05:30

Summerhill democracy makes it a happy school.

Summerhill is possibly the happiest school in the world. We have no truants and seldom a case of homesickness. We very rarely have fights - quarrels of course, but seldom have I seen a stand-up fight like the ones we used to have as boys. I seldom hear a child cry; because children when free have much less hate to express than children who are downtrodden. Hate breeds hate, and love breeds love. Love means approving of children, and that is essential in any school. You can’t be on the side of children if you punish them and storm at them. Summerhill is a school in which the child knows that he is approved of.

Mind you, we are not above and beyond human foibles. I spent weeks planting potatoes one spring, and when I found eight plants pulled up in June, I made a big fuss. Yet there was a difference between my fuss and that of an authoritarian. My fuss was about potatoes, but the fuss an authoritarian would have made would have dragged in the question of morality--right and wrong. I did not say that it was wrong to steal my spuds; I did not make it a matter of good and evil--I made it a matter of my spuds. They were my spuds and they should have been left alone. I hope I am making the distinction clear.

Let me put it another way. To the children, I am no authority to be feared. I am their equal, and the row I kick up about my spuds has no more significance to them than the row a boy may kick up about his punctured bicycle tire. It is quite safe to have a row with a child when you are equals.

Now some will say: “That’s all bunk. There can’t be equality. Neill is the boss; he is bigger and wiser.” That is indeed true. I am the boss, and if the house caught fire the children would run to me. They know that I am bigger and more knowledgeable, but that does not matter when I meet them on their own ground, the potato patch, so to speak.

When Billy, aged five, told me to get out of his birthday party because I hadn’t been invited, I went at once without hesitation --just as Billy gets out of my room when I don’t want his company. It is not easy to describe this relationship between teacher and child, but every visitor to Summerhill knows what I mean when I say that the relationship is ideal. One sees it in the attitude to the staff in general. Rudd, the chemistry man, is Derek. Other members of the staff are known as Harry, and Ulla, and Pam. I am Neill, and the cook is Esther.

In Summerhill, everyone has equal rights. No one is allowed to walk on my grand piano, and I am not allowed to borrow a boy’s cycle without his permission. At a General School Meeting, the vote of a child of six counts for as much as my vote does.

Summerhill: Lessons and Exams-- 2

2009-12-04T23:37:00.002+05:30

This is what Neill says about the exams:

...
All the same there is a lot of learning in Summerhill. Perhaps a group of our twelveyear-
olds could not compete-with a class of equal age in handwriting or spelling or fractions. But in an examination requiring originality, our lot would beat the others hollow.

We have no class examinations in the school, but sometimes I set an exam for fun. The following questions appeared in one such paper:

Where are the following:- Madrid, Thursday Island, yesterday, love, democracy, hate, my pocket-screw driver (alas, there was no helpful answer to that one).

Give meanings for the following:- 9 the number shows how many are expected of each)- Hand (3)…. Only two, got the third right – the standard of measure for a horse. Brass (4)…. Metal, cheek, top army officers, department of an orchestra. Translate Hamlets, To-be-or-not-to-be speech into Summerhillese.

These questions are obviously not intended to be serious, and the children enjoy them thoroughly. Newcomers, on the whole, do not rise to the answering standard of pupils who have become accustomed to the school. Not that they have less brainpower, but rather because they have become so accustomed to work in a serious groove that any light touch puzzles them.

This is the play side of our teaching. In all classes much work is done. If, for some reason a teacher cannot take his class on the appointed day, there is usually much disappointment for the pupils.

David, aged nine, had to be isolated for whooping cough. He cried bitterly. “I’ll miss Roger’s lesson in geography,” he protested. David had been in the school practically from birth, and he had definite and final ideas about the necessity of having his lessons given to him. David is now a lecturer in mathematics at London University.

A few years ago someone at a General School Meeting (at which all school rules are voted by the entire school, each pupil and each staff member having one vote) proposed that a certain culprit should be punished by being banished from lessons for a week. The other children protested on the ground that the punishment was too severe.

My staff and I have a hearty hatred of all examinations. To us the university exams are anathema. But we cannot refuse to teach children the required subjects. Obviously, as long as the exams are in existence, they are our masters. Hence, the Summerhill staff is always qualified to teach to the set standard.

Not that many children want to take these exams; only those going to the university do so. And such children do not seem to find it especially hard to tackle these exams. They generally begin to work for them seriously at the age of fourteen, and they do the work in about three years. Of course they don’t always pass at the first try. The more important fact is that they try again.
...
...

Summerhill : Lessons and Exams -- 1

2009-12-04T23:13:00.004+05:30

Here is what Neill has to say about examinations and lessons in his introduction to his school.

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What is Summerhill like? Well, for one thing, lessons are optional. Children can go to them or stay away from them--- for years if they want to. There is timetable--- but only for the teachers.

The children have classes usually according to their age, bue sometimes according to their interests. We have no new methods of teaching, because we do not consider that teaching in itself matters much. Whether a school has or has not a special method for teching long division is of no significance, for long division is of no importance except for those who want to learn it. And the child who wants to learn long division will learn it no matter how it is taught.

Strangers to this idea of freedom will be wondering what sort of madhouse it is where children play all day if they want to...
...
[story of a student]

This story shows that learning itself is not as important as personality and character. Jack failed in his university exams because he hated book learning. But his lack of knowledge about Lamb's essays or French language did not handicap him in life. He is now a successful engineer.

...
...

Summerhill -- A S Neill

2009-12-02T01:02:00.005+05:30

Summerhill is not just an idea, but an ideal. For a times on this blog, I will now copy and paste paragraphs about this wonderful Summerhill School from A.S. Neill's old book copy. I intend to buy multiple books about this school and related topics. If you have not seen this book, or read the link, I will strongly urge you to give a brief read once, at least. So, here goes the first update.

...

When my first wife and I began the school, we had one main idea: to make the school fit the child--- instead of making the child fit the school.
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I have taught in ordinary schools for many years. I knew the other way well. I knew it was all wrong. It was wrong because it was based on an adult conception of what a child should be and of how a child should learn. The other way dated from the days when psychology was still an unknown science.
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Well, we set out to make a school in which we should allow children freedom to be themselves. In order to do this, we had to renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all my training, all religious instruction. We have been called brave, but it did not require courage. All it required was what we had, a complete belief in the child as a good, not an evil, being. For almost forty years, this belief in the goodness of the child never wavered; it rather has become final faith.
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My view is that a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestions of any kind, he will develope as far as he is capable of developing. Logically, Summerhill is a place in which people who have some innate ability and wish to be scholars will be scholars; while those who are only fit to sweep the streets will sweep the streets. But we have not produced a street cleaner so far. Nor do I write this snobbishly, for I would rather see a school produce a happy street cleaner rather than a neurotic scholar.

...
...

coherent dedispersion: 2

2009-08-28T12:57:00.004+05:30

I can now reproduce the results of Adithya completely. There is the issue of the code being too slow. I am working with cProfile to fix the slower portions of it. Shown above is the pulse region (B0809+74) at high resolution (16 micro-seconds) at 24 MHz. The pulse peak is 50 times above the noise, roughly. I suspect at higher resolution, it will be even sharper.

More is yet to come, when i make the code faster.

Lessons for my child: logic and rationality

2009-08-23T13:17:00.001+05:30

Let us start with a story of a girl, who went to school regularly, studied on time and had her fun on playground. She was obedient, respected her parents and believed deeply in God. When going for an exam she would bow to her Gods, and then touch her mother's feet. She always received highest scores in exams.

Over a few years this became a pattern. However, owing to a relative's illness, her mother had to leave their home for a few weeks. The girl was without supervision, and over those weeks, she did not study well, and wasted her time in front of television. When it came to exams, she realised that she could not touch her mother's feet, since her mother was not at home. She was terribly anxious and nervous. She did poorly in exams, and to believe that her exam scores had something to do with touching her mother's feet. It required her mother all her (mother's) wit and patience to point out the obvious flaw in this logic.

Touching feet was a sign of respect, not the cause of respect. Touching feet followed from loving her mother, and acting according to mother's advice. If the girl failed to respect motther's advice about timely studies in mother's absence, touching feet would not bring in results. This is rational thinking, it connects one thought with another, and makes one 'logical' chain.

So, here is what I would emhpasise on:

An enquiry into natural world has to be rational, and not based on only faith. Thus, the enquiry is not based on some book, some (God-) man's words, or Nobel Laureate's recommendation. Logical connections remove individual subjectivity, and bring in an element of unbiased understanding of nature's work.
Simple explanations of phenomena are most profound, think of Einstein's equation (energy is equivalent of mass times light-velocity squared) or Newton's law of gravity.
There is no role for any dogma, religion or faith based. This is not to say that science opposes any religion. Quite the opposite, as Einstein said, "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious (S)He is not". In order to understand God's (substitute with karma, nature, whatever) creations, we have to believe that He obeys his own rules, laws. Those rules have no bias or arbitrariness. To illustrate the above, think of the following: "It rains because it is God's will". This statement is very agreeable, however does not give us any predictive power. Therefore, this statement alone is not very useful. We always knew God does everything. However, a statement like "Clouds cause rains" is very useful. Again, one can discount "Clouds are because it is God's will" as per above logic, and continue to resort to natural explanations to understand the phenomena of rains.
Question everything (including this statement) rationally, everything! Why, why not, what, what not, how, and how not... Convince yourself of your chain of logic entirely. It should allow you to have confidence about predicting something using your logic. Only then it will make any sense.

After all, we started with why think. It was to make our lives better, more meaningful, whatever that means. This may take you Buddha's way, or along with the Western civilization. Keep working , and keep thinking.

When you do that, remain open to enquiry from others, learn to respect opinions and debate honestly. That is going to be next in this series.

Discovery and spirit of observation

2009-08-11T18:48:00.004+05:30

We all believe (rightfully so) that Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars. However, there remains a very curious case of a military officer in Alaska who may have detected not just the first pulsar, but did a sky survey for them. He was alone, in a remote army camp, with a radar built to detect incoming missiles. He found pulses (specifically flashes) from Crab and other pulsars, and scouted the sky for more.

Mr. Charles Schisler was his name, you will find more on the link provided. He may not have been trained to 'analyse', but certainly knew how to discover. He knew when he did find something new. He had remarkable skill to know the preserve, to correlate, and put all those pieces together over a long interval time. All this was done at his own initiative.

He should get a honorary PhD, this man deserves that more than myself (and presumably others like me.)

To me, this just happens to show how diverse the nature of 'discovery' can be , and tells us about human spirit, in its rawest form, to know about new things. It also shows how secrecy can diminish importance of knowledge that can be shared by the rest of the humanity. This points to faulty patent scheme and copy-rights that exist today...

Find out more on links below:

http://visibleuniverse.blogspot.com/2007/08/charles-schisler-pulsar-pioneer.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7157/full/448974a.html

An Independent 1967 Discovery of Pulsars

AIP Conf. Proc. 983, 642 (2008)

http://link.aip.org/link/?APCPCS/983/642/1

Lessons for my child: power of observation

2009-07-18T21:46:00.001+05:30

Cosmos is complex, perhaps too complex to fathom, and many elements of the cosmos are intertwined in nature. However, we can take it from Einstein that ``Subtle is the Lord, but malicious She is not". This means the cosmos, even though complex in detail, operates through very few, and simple and direct rules. The simplicity is of course overshadowed by multiple phenomena operating simultaneously. Careful observation of cosmos may reveal some of the secrets of its laws.

It is not simply ``watching". For example, if you watch a movie, it would be meaningless exercise if you can not narrate its script or story or or meaning later. What a pity it would be, if someone had to watch Deewar or Kaala Pathar, and not remember the actor who made it all so watchable.
One observes with patience. It takes all your drive to be still, and observe a hummingbird in flight while sucking nectar
The devil is always in detail. One has to remember endless nights of observations by Tycho Brahe, whereby positions of Mars were known to such an accuracy, that Kepler could have one, and only one hypothesis satisfying them. One can also remember astute, and precise observations by Charles Darwin or Marie Curie.
One must isolate a phenomenon and observe it away from influence by other factors involved. This sounds like, one has to know a phenomenon beforehand (to isolate it) before observing it. That is true to certain extent. In this regard, science progresses by one step at a time.

There are many exercises from our daily lives which would teach us the power of observation. An incomplete list goes as below.

Ants path to/fro sugar
Fish and their internal organs
Microscopes and micro-organisms in water
Plants grow steadily everyday, photograph a plant inside your house from the same angle over a month and make a movie.
Magnets and compass: migratory birds fly using their internal compass.
Beetles, butterflies and their colours
Melting ice, and freezing water.

LOFAR first light !

2009-07-14T19:42:00.001+05:30

Our telescope has been shown to be completely operational. The electronics worked all in parts, then they conducted tests of individual antennas, measured their responses, then they connected all of them to a massive super-computer.

The voltages from all the antennas are combined locally to 'form beams' and pass on the data to the super-computer, where a program does the job of a traditional 'correlator'. It basically compares (correlates) voltages from one reference antenna with other antennas. That tells us about structure of the astronomical sources, akeen to images of the source. We can also just add up signals from all antennas, say to observe a pulsar, where all the separate antennas will act in conjunction like a single large dish.

Follow the LOFAR on twitter...

Lesson for my child : Curiosity

2009-07-04T21:15:00.001+05:30

Humans are curious about variety of phenomena in our daily lives: rains, fires, hurricanes/ storms, waves, tides. It also applies to things that we can not experience using our senses: clear sky, ocean depths, stars, Sun, Moon, etc.

Throughout their existence humans all over the planet have asked questions about things that were around them: their surroundings, our planet, the cosmos, the origin of all the things, and where were all going to end. वेद, or the Vedas called them पंचमहाभूत, or the five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Sky. Everything is made of them. It is not important if Vedas were correct or not, what matters most is that, humans thought of the cosmos. The surrounding natural elements and cosmos on the larger scale made an impact on those early Hindu thinkers.
Those Hindu thinkers related various phenomena as manifestations of those five elements. This is characteristic of humans: we relate seemingly disparate phenomena using fewer logical elements. At one level, we should understand that those associations are not real, but they allow us to comprehend phenomena in an organized manner; and if the exercise is successful, we can predict certain things using those associations.
Curious human will observe and think about apparent patterns. This is most crucial for the survival of species: food resources, predicting natural phenomena (predicting tides is crucial for fisher-folk, rains are important for farming).
This curiosity also leads to betterment of lives:

-- waves/ tides and fishing
-- rains and paddy farming
-- diseases and micro-organisms

Here is a true story of a Goan boy who was bitten by a snake. The snake was of harmless kind, although very similar to poisonous adder snake in its appearance. A Tantrik was summoned by parents to `cure' their boy of the poison. No wonder, the boy was fine after the Tantrik performed his rituals. It so happened that the boy was bitten by a snake again, however, this time by a real poisonous adder. His parents preferred the Tantrik once more, however, all his rituals took precious time away. The boy died the next morning.

The story is important, in that one has to be curious and understand that poisonous snake alone cause harm. As far as we can make out patterns on the snake-back, we are safe, else we face grave consequences. The same goes for the rest of the nature.

Life is precious and there are no guarantees. However, curiosity and learning allow us to survive in this world better, and also make it a richer experience.

What I want my child to know

2009-07-03T22:05:00.001+05:30

I hope to be a father soon. As a good father, I would present the best part of me to my progeny. Apart from my genes, the best thing I can pass on to my child is what I learnt in my long education in my life so far. It is the rational/ scientific thinking and attitude, along with the self-awareness, that identifies humans.

In a series of posts, I will now outline my thoughts on scientific thinking and self-awareness. One day my child would read this, learn something, and perhaps laugh.

Coherent Dedispersion

2009-07-02T21:18:00.000+05:30

Our code to remove dispersion effects from pulsar time series is now in its 5th revision. The major changes are:

1) the code reads one period of pulsar in small chunks of 32k samples
2) the chunks are dedispersed and smoothed with a factor = 4096
3) smoothed chunks are appended to the final time series.

Going Dutch !

2009-06-30T16:51:00.001+05:30

I have now shifted my base from BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus (in India) to ASTRON, the Netherlands. It is quite a change. This blog should reflect that change in a big way. For now, there are two things going on simultaneously: pulsars (single-pulse work and coherent dedispersion) and shell search.

You will find me blogging here extensively on these in the coming days. The personal posts are on my other blog, The Laughing Buddha.

PPV maps details

2009-03-30T21:43:00.000+05:30

Equations for the position to velocity (PPV) cubes were computed for a 3-D cube of density with its center (point P) at a given distance (d) from Sun (S). Here, by data convention, Y axis is along the line of site (SP).

For any pixel in the cube (point Q), the line of site SQ would then subtend an angle wrt the center (SP). Let Q' be the projection of Q on X-Y plane, therefore, SQ' has projections of x & y along the two axes.

We can then relate R0 (= CS = distance of Sun from Galaxy's center), R ( = distance CQ'), distance d (SP), and distance d' (SQ') through other quantities and angles (such as longitude= angle CSP).

The projection of relative velocity between S & Q' (due to galactic rotation) is added to the projections of the pixel velocities (vxx, vyy and vzz). Doing this for each pixel creates the cube "v_los". We sort the pixel values falling in different velocity bins, and make velocity maps of width 1 km/s.

Simulations: PPV maps ready

2009-03-29T23:50:00.001+05:30

Testing with 10x10x20 cubes
PPV maps seem to be all right.
Will now test on the desktop with full limits put in.

MHD Simulations: PPV maps

2009-03-28T21:47:00.001+05:30

Read density, vxx, vyy,vzz cubes
Compute pixel (radial) velocities due galactic rotation
Add components of vxx,vyy,vzz from individual pixel values.
ERROR in writing the files in PPV files

MHD simulations

2009-03-25T21:40:00.001+05:30

Miguel has asked for the latest in MHD simulation cubes. so, i have read data with Python, instead of C++. it is a lot faster to write the code and test it. it is also to process and update.

Read the density array: split the lines in parts
Store the data in density_data[] and reshape it.
plot select slices along z, and they are okay.
Now read density and velocities.

flucatuation analysis: easyGUI

2009-03-22T16:40:00.000+05:30

The program menu now has a comprehensive logical structure. There will be text files holding menu data.
Program reads menu (text) files and records pulsar parameters as read from the data file. These can be later used for various analyses.
The main menu leading to average profile in a sub-menu "fold menu". There wiill be plot menu on all such sub-menus.
I can now display pulse sequence and zoom in on the chosen sequence area.

fluctuation analysis: EasyGUI

2009-03-17T22:37:00.000+05:30

EasyGUI is god-sent

I can display various options in a menu window and ask the user to click and choose.
I can choose the data file and read it.
I can plot the average profile

All this in 3 days work. Python is getting better every day.

.

fluctuation spectral analysis

2009-03-06T21:32:00.002+05:30

We can now read PPR data from Gauribidanur and UTR-2, YEY!!!
The problems in LRFLUC are ignored for the moment.
We will now consider to write a suitable GUI. The only candidate (simplest to work with, and most basic to be found on all Python installations) is 'easyGUI'

easygui.sourceforge.net
you try it too.

.

fluctuation spectral analysis

2009-03-03T22:30:00.000+05:30

We read Arecibo data
We obtain a 2-D zoomed single pulse data as an image (intensity on 3rd axis)
We take 2-D FFT
We fold the FFT to obtain an equivalent of LRFLUC, and it does not work properly.

fluctuation analysis

2009-02-27T22:27:00.001+05:30

Average profile zoom works:

we use Matplotlib window (ginput) to read click location.
two clicks are used to mark pulse window.

fluctuation spectrum analysis

2009-02-16T19:58:00.003+05:30

I am writing Python code to analyse single-pulse data from radio pulsars. The idea is to make polar maps from fluctuation analysis.

I can read data from Arecibo
display average profile, and
plot single-pulse sequences from the file.

$1,000,000,000 or more

2008-06-15T13:02:00.003+05:30

Given pathetic higher education in India, many worthy Indian students leave for US, Europe, and even Russia or Mauritius. This means they spend a lot of their money on education in other countries. This amount has been estimated to be $10 bn.

In the post I will point out another substantial loss to India, the total time wasted by students leaving India. This amounts to another $1 bn - $10 bn. How? Here is my calculation, try your own.

Let us consider a student preparing to go abroad. In that process, the student devotes most of his time to prepare for GRE, visa application, searching for university departments, application to different labs/professors for funding. Typically this means, the student would sacrifice about 1 year on the process, rather than doing something creative in India. In turn, our country is less productive.

Further, the student, typically BE or MSc, is employable in some industry in India. Even a BPO job would earn up to Rs. 3,00,000 in one year. Hence, the student is foregoing the salary and that much of productivity is lost. The amount is generally higher, for most students will be productive than being in a BPO.

If 1,50,000 students leave India each year for studies abroad, we can compute the total loss in productivity using the above two numbers (highlighted in bold).

TOTAL= (No of students) x (time lost) x (salary earned OR productivity)

= 1,50,000 x 1 yr x 3,00,000

= 45 billion Rupees

= $ 1 bn

There we are, India poorer by $1 bn, just because students are less productive in the time before leaving for abroad. The numbers used (time lost) and (producivity) are variables, and I have used intelligent guesses. Productivity is from average salary by a fresh graduate from our college. (Time lost) is average 1 - 2 years from my own experience.

IITs and Higher Education

2008-06-14T09:14:00.006+05:30

On the day before yesterday (11 June) I came across a "LEADER ARTICLE" titled 'How Not To Build New IITs'. You can read the entire things on Sl(T)imes of India site. What's wrong with that? Plenty, which prompted this blog entry. This entry was also published as a comment, FINALLY.

Being an IITian, a lot better analysis was expected from Mr. Ganguly. He starts off by saying, "Being in IIT used to be part of the elan of belonging to a Fabian elite". Such a logic would suggest that IITs were meant to create an elite class. He later claims that, "Your place in social hierarchy at IITs was determined by one thing alone--- your GPA".

No, we do not want our higher education institutes to foster a sense of elitism. We all are citizens with equal rights and differing abilities, some are better at higher studies, others at something else. IITs are supposed to provide high-class education. Perhaps Nehru, and other planners had given up hopes of improving other universities at international level. It is a sorry situation, where most of Indians can not obtain international-class higher education in India. By reducing options (of other university colleges), IITs were made the elite. The reality, however, is that they never were of international class. No IIT ever ranked close to Harvard. So, claiming IITs of being elite schools is wrong in factual sense, as well as ethical.

As for Grade Point Average (GPA) being the sole indicator as one's ability to live life, Mr Ganguly is very wrong again. Perhaps someone like Mr. Gates or Mr Jobs, two most influential persons from the Silicon Valley, may not obtain GPA of even 5.0. That does not speak of their ability to innovate, enthuse and lead a team of technicians. From my own experience as a teacher (at a top-ranked engineering school) I can certainly say that GPA is a poor indicator of a person's understanding, and a narrow outlook at a student's ability.

However, the biggest failure of the article is that, Mr. Ganguly fails to see the larger picture about Indian higher-education system. Given the lack of world-class education, many Indians migrate abroad and never return. Despite (arguably) 80% of IITs deciding to stay in India after graduation, many others leave India, especially those who do not enter IITs. These include even my own students.

Demand for higher education institutions outstrips supply. By limiting the supply, our government has created a situation of scarcity and then played its own politics. Mr. Ganguly has chosen to focus only on this narrow point of reservation politics, which is unfortunate, for he has missed the larger issue at stake.

A logical solution for the problem is to just increase the supply of higher education institutes. If the government can not do so, it should allow private players to do it WITHOUT stringent (and silly) government regulations and interference. The present government has refused to relax its draconian rules and regulations: about who teaches, how much he/she gets paid, what are the syllabi, what are fees, etc. One is not even touching the issue of bribery to obtain licenses, so common in education department.

Mr. Ganguly, and other readers are referred to informative articles by Dr. Atanu Dey (refer to his blog ). However, We must thank Mr Ganguly for raising the issue of higher education in India, it is a worthy issue. We can only hope that more discussion leads to awareness about basic issues at hand.

Interference Mitigation

2008-06-09T10:07:00.005+05:30

Vaishnavi worked on Median-based interference identification and removal. The basic idea is to treat the time-freq map of a given baseline as a 2-D array. See the above diagram for such an example, where the red arrow indicates one interference location.

We then take a small section of this 2-D array (say 32x32 matrix), where the 3rd axis is the intensity (or amplitude). We compute the median and standard deviation of the section (32x32 matrix). We then put some criterion of (median+7*sigma) for genuine data.

Amplitude > (median + 7*sigma) is treated as interference. This appears to identify interference quite reasonably. Check the following image, where black pixel indicates interference. Compare that with the top image, where most of the interference is identified.

There is some data loss due to over-correction. Even so, total data flagged is about 15%, which is quite good.

Interference Removal from Time-Frequency Data

2008-01-09T21:44:00.000+05:30

We start with a flat time-frequency data, much like shown in the image on the left. This is VLA data (one baseline) observed at 325 MHz. The arrows indicate high-level and low-level interference in the data.

The most striking quality of interference, is that it is mostly confined to high 'spatial' frequencies. Here, I refer to spatial grey-level variation frequencies.

There are two approaches to remove / isolate such an interference:

To take an FT of the image itself.
Remove the high-frequency features (those belonging to fast-changing features.
For all pixels, use a large (21x21 pixel) filter to compute mean, median and rms of grey levels.
If the pixel value is greater than (mean+5*sigma) or (median + 5 sigma), then one can safely substitute median for the pixel value.
One could compute rms over the entire image to avoid being dominated by local features.

2008: Plans and Actions

2008-01-02T09:33:00.000+05:30

Order not so crucial, but wish list is quite doable, right?

Get SAX paper out of the door.
Finish analysing MHD cube, how many chimneys will i lose due to sensitivity and resolution limits? Can we count holes in HI for a large number of MHD simulations?
B0809+74, what is the circulation time?
B0834+06, what is the problem with the circulation time at 35 MHz? How does the polar pattern look at higher frequencies?
2-antenna interference on 3/4 major sources: from amplitude/ phase calibration of fringes, can we tell the sizes of sources with fringes observed?
Can we make crude images with even 10 different u-v tracks with a 2-antenna telescope?
Can we use the Moon for occultation studies?
Astrophysics - II course.
Meditate in Leh.
Maha working towards her higher studies abroad.

X'mas mass in Goa Velha

2007-12-25T22:12:00.000+05:30

I attended the midnight mass on 24th December night with Angela and her family, along with Devart (Bablu) Rana. The main attraction was to see the localization of the global X'mas tradition: the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Some curious points:
1) Everyone, irrespective of where they were born, celebrate some birth of a man thousands of Km away. They do not know most of the names (Bethelhem, Jerusalem, sea of Mediterrainean) and the times involved.
2) Continuing the above, all think Jesus was white. No mention was made to Judaism and the roots of christianity in Judaism.
3) For common folk, there were skits presented, where common public problems (drinking, gambling, etc.) were shown to have a common cure (christianity). No efforts were made to understand the psychological problems possible, how healing is possible without invoking the Lord, or without any reference to His greatness.
4) Most the examples above were very crude. Indeed, how can theft (possible social and economic factors being dominant) be bracketed with smoking or drugs (where personal factors may dominate)? To localize such problems and separate the different factors behind the cause of such 'illness' is vital to find a cure.
5) Political statements were inserted slyly, for example, SEZs were bad. No reasons were given, except vague statements about nature. How economics matters and how it can sideline sustainable growth is never openly discussed. Perhaps I am expecting too much from an organized religion.

On the other hand:

6) Hindu way of 'pooja' (prayers) was adopted, priests were using 'agarbatti' (incense sticks) to make circular movements in front of the Lord and were chanting. This is very similar to our Ganapati pooja, except the 'arati' is different.
7) Songs were in all local languages, Marathi, Konkani, and (most amusingly) English and Portuguese. English is the medium of choice for the upwardly mobile (like yours truly). Portuguese was displaced from that position after 'independence'...
8) Occasion was treated as a way to show-case local fashions by many. In fact, some local people explained that " 'too many reveling' clothes by front-bencher women kept the priests from falling asleep". The one in the rear rows promptly closed the eyes and caught on their sleep.

After this foreword, here are a couple of songs in Konkani

1) San Kiteak ailai balla?
Sang konnem tuka dhadd-la?
Sorg soddun koso denvloi?
Khoim Mhonn tthikann kortoloi?

Patkantlim soddounk ailam
Devjivit vattunk tumkam
Devmogan tumkam bhoronk.
Bapache vengent vhorunk.

2) Mogan thevlem monxeachea hatant
Devalem dan (3) ball Jezu rupan (2)
Dan tem omolik, kitlem tem vichitr
Guttlailolem soddvonne ghuttant

Natalm disa ailo denvum mog
Amchea kallzamni ravunk dovrunk tog,
khuxalkaie-dan sonvsarbhor vanttunk
pavla konnkonim chol-ia moganuch.

Natalam disa ailo denv'n sontos
Dukh-khoddamnin bhorunk visvas vhodd,
Bhorvanxachem dan jivitant vosunk
Niraxiponnam dium-ia soddun.

Processing HI cube - II

2007-10-24T22:05:00.000+05:30

A) We now have a cube V_los(x,y,z)

Compute V_min and V_max (extrema) of V_los matrix,
Create new array V_obs, where velocity values (V_los) range from V_min to V_max, in steps of 1 km/s,

B) We want an output image matrix, OUT(x,y,z), where x_i corresponds to V_obs(i)

Scan the V_los(x,y,z) matrix; say, V = V_los(x,y,z)
If V1 < V < V2, then OUT(v,y,z) += rho(x,y,z)
Repeat a & b for energy and pressure.

Processing HI cube - I

2007-10-24T19:57:00.000+05:30

Computing the orientation of each cell w.r.t. the central pixel

We would like to keep the simulation cube at a distance d (element: X=0, YMAX/2, ZMAX/2 is at a distance d).

Now, we compute angle subtended by all cells, and compute differential rotation velocity as per Brand and Blitz (1991).

1) Read velocity cubes Vxx,Vyy,Vzz

a) Compute projects of components of V_rot (due to galactic rotation) along the los.
b) Compute projection of velocities Vxx, Vyy & Vzz along the line of sight (los)
c) V_los = V_rot + components from step a

Formulae

a)
tan(theta) = y / (d+x)
(D * D) = (d+x)^2 + (y*y)

R' = sqrt ( D^2 + R^2 + 2*R*D* cos(theta+L)

Compute V(R') using Brand & Blitz (1991)

R" = D sin(theta + L)
phi = 90 - (theta+L)
phi" = arccos(R"/R)

V_rot = V(R') * cos(90 - (phi+phi") ) = V(R') * cos(theta + L - phi)

b)
theta = arctan(y / (d+x) )
V"yy = Vyy cos(theta)
V"xx = Vxx sin(theta)

chi = arctan(z/ (d+x) )
V"zz = Vzz cos(chi)

c) v_los (x,y,z) = V"xx + V"yy + V"zz + V_rot

Fractals and image characterisation

2007-10-04T08:06:00.000+05:30

Some links are in order

So, once you know about fractal dimensions, come to read the stuff on the right (Conti, 2001)

One can treat the image 3-D object. Compute the total number of occupied boxes in X-Y-I dimension box, as a function of size of the box. D = ln(number)/ ln(radius).

It is a little bit more complicated. Check the paper by Conci, a PPT talk can also be found.

How to distinguish between landscape and portrait pictures?

2007-10-01T22:37:00.000+05:30

Perhaps we can search for a large number of pixels with same natural colors: green, blue and black (shadows). look if a large fraction of pixels contain the same 'Hue' and 'Saturation'.
Another try: Look at the Fourier spectra of images, and mark radii of 60%, 90%, 99%, 99.9% power. they should be distinct for landscape images and facial portraits or nearby objects.
Human objects have a lot more symmetry than the natural objects. In fact, there could be some fractal pattern seen over the different length scales of an image of a natural scenery. Try to capture 'fractal' properties of pixels.

speaking of the last one: one could look at fractal dimension of a picture pixel values. How? Perhaps in the next blog post...

PHY GC 471 : Astrophysics, a first course

2007-09-02T23:16:00.000+05:30

Course Description

This is a first course in astronomy aimed at a wide section of audience. We will introduce concepts with minimal use of mathematical tools. We would like to give a broad perspective of science to students, from regular night-sky astronomy to fascinating space astronomy. We will discuss historical context of some ideas and how they have evolved today. Keeping the engineering background of student population in mind, we will also emphasize on techniques, some challenging instrumentation, and details of space exploration.

Scope and Objectives

This being a first course to a variety of students from engineering background, we prefer to teach fundamental ideas about astronomy, and defer a detailed astrophysical treatment to another higher-level course. Astronomers study properties of light emitted by various sources in the sky. We will start by studying concepts of brightness, flux measurement and spectral-line observations, followed by instruments used these measurements. We will then discuss various astronomical objects, starting from our solar system, stars, to galaxies. In each case, we discuss basic astrophysical mechanisms to understand nature of light emitted by objects under consideration. We then discuss how to estimate physical parameters of stars, galaxies and the cosmos from the properties of light detected in various wavebands.

Textbook

IGNOU study material PHE-15 (Astronomy and Astrophysics), Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2006.

Astronomy Discussion Meetings: Proposal to the Astronomical Society of India

2007-08-25T22:02:00.000+05:30

Over the past few years astronomy meetings have not been held regularly in India. Astronomical Society of India (ASI) only organizes bi-annual meetings, which are woefully short on discussions. To increase their frequency, topical discussion meetings involving a small number of active participants were proposed. Such meetings will allow a close interactions between astronomers, mainly from India. They will have an added benefit of smaller number of participants and of being focussed on topics of LOC's interests. The costs and local organization efforts will also be reduced significantly.

The ASI has accepted the proposal in principle. Here are the basic tentacles of such meetings. The ASI has granted a sum of 1 Lakh towards expenses of the meeting. One could further approach DST/ISRO/UGC for more funding. Given Ranjan being in DST committee, it would be easier from them.

There will typically be sessions over 2 and half days, with about 15 presentations. The emphasis is on discussions. Hence, followed by one 45 minute talk, there is 15 minute's break for Q/A session. At the end of each session, there will be an hour of open debate on possible new work, or comments on on-going work. This is place for on-board calculations, and some laptop demos, etc.

The meeting crucially depends on 4/5 resource persons. These will chair sessions, seed discussions and direct the course of the meeting. Their participation is vital, as is the willingness of the public to discuss issues and settle them on the spot, rather than defering to person-to-person discussion.

There will be about 10-15 faculty and 10-15 PhD scholars. Most members will stay during the entire two and half days of the meeting. There are no frills, except perhaps one institute buffet and some drinks from the LOC. The number is restricted to a number of 25, and is by invitation only. Most participants will not be provided travel support, and the local travel support will be provided on pay-per-use basis.

All these are thought to make the arrangement work of the LOC minimal, allowing for more groups from India to host meetings. This will allow a larger number of meetings, wider set of meetings, and dispersing meeting venues.

Amen to that!

Stop Sexual Harrassment

2007-07-25T22:23:00.001+05:30

The title says it all...

Data Acquisition Block Diagram

2007-07-17T15:20:00.000+05:30

The data acquisition of a band-limited signal has the following broad steps:

DC removal

2-bit ADC (0.5 MHz speed)

Collect 4 such samples at one time (for simplicity, copy the same signals 4 times)

Build a sampler, of 0.5 MHz.

One could take 10 MHz signal, and use every 20th pulse (simple counter) for sampling.

Put together four 2-bit samples on a bus with an isolator for i/o.

Feed the signal to the data acquisition card sitting in the PCI slot of a PC.

BITS Goa Radio Telescope : Software Correlator

2007-07-04T21:22:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Aniket and Mandar, we will get a data acquisition card interfaced to a PC by next semester.

All the card does, is to accept AC voltages of 250 KHz bandwidth, digitize it (2-bit ADC) and sample it at Nyquist rate (500 KHz). Four samples (2x4 bits = 1 byte) are then packed together on the fly to form one byte. The resultant one-byte is stored on a PC for processing. So, the pipeline looks as below

--- signal ---- >>-- ADC -->>--Linux PC-->>- FILE
(0.5 V AC________3-level____bit packing
0.25 MHz band)___2-bit_________program

ADC has two comparators (NE 521 ?). Depending upon the input, one of the the following 00 (-2), 01 (-1), 10 (+1), 11 (+2) is the output of the ADC.

The sampler signal of 0.5 MHz samples the ADC output voltages. Four of the samples are fed to the acquisition card through data cables.

The data rates are slow, 500 k Bytes per second. Given the modern computer disk rates, it is possible to sustain a on-the-fly bit packing program in PC. The program accepts 4 bytes, and based on a precalculated table, stores corresponding 1-byte output onto a file.

LO and Sampler Frequency Solution

2007-07-03T23:49:00.000+05:30

We have our RF band as 73 - 74.6 MHz. Using one of the frequencies given by the Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator, we would like to generate LO (of) such (frequency) that, our band is folded at some suitable IF. The end of the IF band should be the sampler frequency, again one of those given by the oscillator.

The first image is one such combination for the RF band and LO (plotted very quickly using PLOT program in Mac).

Given the 0.26 MHz band ending at 4.096 MHz beyond LO (70 MHz), the IF band looks as given in the second figure. The IF band now falls between 0 MHz and 4.096 MHz, although mostly empty (0-3.75 MHz), due to our RF filter.

The band is now sampled with 8.192 MHz, the sub-harmonic of 16.384 MHz from the oscillator.

Since both LO and sampler frequency are derived from the same ref, there should be more stability in the system.

One can have another combination of such a LO and sampler frequencies. As an exercise, try these two frequencies and draw the plots: LO (76.8 MHz) and Sampler (5 MHz).

Using the Crystal Oscillator

2007-07-03T00:42:00.000+05:30

Our Band is 73-74.6. How do we use a Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator, referred in the earlier post? We need to generate an LO signal (between 70-80 MHz) to bring RF signal to an IF of 2-5 MHz. We also need to use one frequency for our sampler.

We have a few frequencies at our disposal, 10, 12.8, and 16.384 MHz, etc. We should use 10 MHz for sampling, after some downconversion (0.5 MHz for 0.25 MHz band). This would be easy, using a digital counter. How do we go about LO? we need one frequency such that a bandwidth of 0.25 MHz in the above band gets down converted at IF.

It depends upon a combination of IF, and bandwidth we choose. The problem is, if the band has a lot of interference, we should be able to switch to some other location nearby (within 73-74.6). A smaller bandwidth makes this possible, while bringing down data rates.

I have a couple of solutions, I will detail two in the next post.

Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator MCOCXOW

2007-06-29T14:48:00.000+05:30

I looked for crystal controlled COs. Here is one data sheet from Golledge. Excellent stability, we do not know the price. It is their featured product, from price and availability point of view.

AIPS : initial calib idea

2007-06-29T12:19:00.000+05:30

Initial Calibration steps in AIPS

INDXR
First clip source for arbitrarily high points (100 KJy), due to correlator errors. (CLIPM)

SETJY to set fluxes of prim calib sources in SU table
CALIB on prim calib to find antenna solutions, SN tab 1
CALIB on second calib : SN tab 2
GETJY to calculate second calib fluxes to second calib (using SN and SU tables)
CLCAL apply second calib source calibration to target sources: CL tab 2

Now, one is free to excise interference. once one has cleaned all the data, return to step 4 above to redo the calibration process (after deleting all SN and CL tables generated above).

Is our PM senile?

2007-06-28T16:10:00.000+05:30

One of Gandhi's letter goes on sale somewhere in the world, and some concerned 'Gandhians' wake up and write to the PM. Our ever-ready prime-minister orders Ministry of External Affairs to intervene to 'acquire' the letter from the Christie's.

Now, either those Gandhians have no better work to do than asking my poor country to pay up 10,000 pounds for a stupid piece of paper. Or PM has gone senile to provide so much of attention to some old, half-dead people. Or, perhaps I have too much time to ponder over such matter.

BUT, NO! It's my fu***ng tax money, and some oldies are looting it. They, by virtue of their age, do not pay any tax, if I remember correctly.

Update: India may serve a notice to Christie's, looks like the Law department has nothing much to do either. There are so many legal reforms pending, all we think of is one piece of paper...

fruitful day!

2007-06-28T01:30:00.000+05:30

things done:

AIPS processing tutorial by Chiranjeevi, it has given a new perspective about GMRT interference removal and calibration.

ms for SAX 1808 paper is ready for desh's view.

there has been tons of discussion about radio telescope.
- the 2-bit samples from 4 elements could combined in one byte per sample rate.
- Cross-correlations of each two-element pairs (total 6 pairs, called 'baselines') can be done for N delays. Resultant array of N correlations can be passed over to FFT, resulting in amplitudes and phases for N/2 spectral channels. (This job can be simplified by using tabulated results for all 8-byte combinations).
- The value N above is decided by delta-u and delta-v that we can have, using 1/imsize for our map (possibly 1/60 deg).
- We need to keep computing such cross-correlations over a large time, integrating amplitude and phases over a large time (about 8 seconds or so).
- These integrated amp and phases are the output (dynamic spectrum) of an effective software correlator.

BITS Goa Radio Telescope

2007-06-27T23:03:00.000+05:30

when i spoke about our plans for hardware for our radio telescope, there was some feedback from my supervisor (Deshpande, RRI). he was of the opinion, that

our telescope was a fantastic idea, and could eventually do international science using 4 element dipoles. we have to plan and execute it well, of course.

in the beginning, we could make images using 2 antennas only, with Mandar and Aniket's data acquisition cards. this means, as soon as we demonstrate 2-slit interferometer, we can think of maps in the second semester.

we should think of using 2 bits and less bandwidth. eventually, we will have 4 element dipoles. so, we will have to store 4x2 = 8 bits = 1 byte at nyquist rate. if we opt for smaller bandwidth (0.25 MHz), we could be saving 0.5 MBytes per second on the disk, with each byte being a sample each from 4 elements.

In the immediate plans:

we should converge using "Mini Circuits" ICs for our RF components. See their website

also, for LO stability, either

a) opt for GPS receiver, and use its 10 MHz signal for LO

b) use a "oven controlled crystal oscillator"

the second option is better for us for now. we will continue to explore the second option for better eventual stability of frequency signal. for better mapping, we need our sampler and LO to be really stable.

Freakonomics

2007-06-06T00:23:00.000+05:30

I read the book Freakonomics. The book entertains and just gleams economic incentives in many daily issues (of largely American life). However, the best thing was the data about education gleamed from US schools, the incentives for cheating in high-stake exams. Thinking on that line, here are a few questions that arose in my mind:

What is the incentive for a student to join a school? Or, in other words, can we convince every parent and child to take education seriously, think long term, invest time and money in it?

What is the incentive for a bank or financial company to fund a student for his schooling? Can a micro-finance company find some benefits in spreading basic education in rural areas?

What is the reason that students sleep in my class? Or what incentive do they have in listening to me and to work harder on the course material?

What is the incentive that I keep myself in education? What would make me stop and move away from Goa?

The last one is a serious question too!

Adopt Your University ! Part 2

2007-05-04T14:19:00.000+05:30

How to go about it?

I am elaborating a solution to remedy the mess in higher education, whereby a university is adopted by a local community, making the process very interactive, transparent, and responsible. I introduced in my earlier post the "Adopt Your University" campaign.

The basic idea: To adopt a university, and create a fund from the local community, council, city by `trading its shares', whereby common man buys those shares individually or through societies. The university is run from one-time fund and other running local funds. Then, local population will remain involved in deciding the content and direction of university programs.

Here we lay out ways to raise enough funds for the university from the public around, and involving the local community in growing and maintaining the university operations.

Create funds for the university by selling certain number of shares to the public. The shares are sold in such a way that no one person or group gets entire control of the shares. This will create a large amount, about 50 crores for the university. This will remain a one-time generation. In case of Shivaji University, Kolhapur district generates about 1000 crores each year, if my information is correct. A fraction of it is required here. People can trade these shares, under certain conditions. A part of the sales profit will go to the university.

What do these shares mean to the public? It is similar the stock market companies in spirit. However, there are bound to be differences, for example, clearly there are no yearly dividends in cash or cheque.

The shares will imply different things to different kind of people.

For most, such as middle-class citizens, they would mean immediate benefits in the form of priority access to university facilities. These could include, but not limited to, astronomical observatory programs, auditorium lecture/demo programs, sports gymnasium and weight training, or discount in training fees for vocational courses (music, computers), etc.

For farmers or small industrialists, it could mean priority access to different orientation programs, manpower training camps, or awareness campaigns. They could also mean, higher priority listing in receiving solutions of their queries/problems from the university.

Any major change in University policy is explained in a general investors' meet (like Reliance Companies did). An approval is sought and then major decisions are taken to a vote.

Local community pledges support to the university by providing certain amount yearly. This will pay the salaries of the staff. This guarantees that the staff remains loyal to the cause and if the administration is lethargic, the city council could (in principle) stop their salary payments.

The research funding should come mainly from services to the local population, industry, including farmers. Some of it will also come from the central government grants, mainly for basic sciences.

The above conditions mean that
- University remains committed to the local cause. Those programs which are not relevant for the community will not naturally receive any money. This is similar to ways of mother nature, where an organism has to evolve to remain relevant. University will keep transforming itself to grow.
- Staff and administration will be responsive. If not, they will be unpopular in the local community, and the community can demand correction.
- University is not subjected to large-scale politics. Since money is generated locally, it will not remain hostage to state/central government policies. The initial funds (50 Crores) will serve as a buffer if the local funds drop over a short period of time (5 years or so).
Programs of the university are decided by a committee of citizens. However, there is a danger in going local, one will certainly loose sight of global standards. Such issues of quality of university programs and maintaining standards is a major task.
- The global focus is maintained through an expert senate committee with many outside experts in various fields. The committee, through independent enquiries, ascertains quality of university programs. It will also guide academic/research programs on campus...
- There would be, in general, no fixed idea about having degree and doing a certain kind of work. Someone with BA (English) can dabble in other areas, if certain level can maintained. The pay scale will be less biased towards those with higher degrees.
- Programs are implemented by administration adhering to global standards set by the committee, without any local interference. Rejection of political influence will be ensured by direct citizen support to the committee.
The operations could be decentralised. No one needs to come to university campus, one could log on the website and do many things. It will involve a generous use of radio network and computers to ensure quick communication and dissemination of knowledge to the community. One could use cheap and easy tools, such as campus radio station (by students perhaps?) or hand-held mobiles, with specialised programs developed for this need. With minimum training, volunteers & workers should be able to operate computer data bases, involving tools such as voice recognition and internet transfer of information from the central server to mobiles via SMS, etc.

The proposal keeps a lot of faith in committee running the university. This requires that the rule book is good, and the wo/men in charge must be honest and tough. They will be responsible for all the activity and retain all the rights and freedom to carry out every activity to perfection. This is possible, although expect political influences of all kinds. It is imperative that the local community is made aware about this issue and it has to support the persons-in-charge against any pressure.

In a future post I will outline one example, using Shivaji University from my hometown.

Adopt Your University !

2007-05-03T22:22:00.000+05:30

A solution for higher-education crisis in India

Given terrible neglect of education sector in India, there is a serious concern about no viable education, and therefore competent jobs, for millions of deserving Indians, especially those who are dying to pay any fees for it.

The problem is, that we have heaped the entire responsibility of educating the populace on to a mythical entity called 'government'. In India it amounts to a large number of babus, arranged in a rigit vertical/horizontal structure. None of this structure was created for India's sake, but for usefulness of a certain Elizabeth. One of the best ways out to reform the university system is to again involve the local community in running the university.

Here is a solution, whereby a university is adopted by a local community, making the process very interactive, transparent, and responsible. I call this "Adopt Your University" campaign. In the current post I will outline the idea, details will be provided in the near future.

The basic idea: To adopt a university, and create a fund from the local community, council, city by `trading its shares', whereby common man buys those shares individually or through societies. The university is run from one-time fund and other running local funds. Then, local population will remain involved in deciding the content and direction of university programs.

Short background:

Apparently, Cambridge and Oxford universities were run by local townships through local funds. London came in the picture only in 19th century. Nalanda was sustained by Magadha kings, for the benefit of their population. Why can't present Indian universities be run like those, where local population sustains a university for their purpose and thereby gets more involved in its affairs. No one will look to government for funding, university will sustain itself by 'selling' its expertise and providing services to the community directly. It will justify its existence and underscore its relevance.

Goals:

University remains open to the public directly, through a Public Relation Office. Comments, complaints, request for advice and proposals are immediately attended to.

University provides many services to the local community, such as:
- Studies water harvesting strategies, rain-forecast based planning of crops, and tree plantation between farms and around.
- Studies strategies in other farming practices about seeds, organic farming, bio-fertilisers, crop deceases, etc.
- Studies local human/animal deceases, or pandemics (bird-flu or) and provides expertise to the community immediately.
- Preserves knowledge about local history, ethnology, archeology, geology, zoology, botany is preserved and research conducted.
- Promotes technology development for local community, such as agricultural tools (e.g., making of jaggery with improvisations in traditional methods) or industry solutions (e.g., cast iron technology and small, inexpensive improvements).
- Promotes research in the local communities, to enable them to solve their own problems in innovative fashion. Any resultant local solutions could be marketed/patented (like GNU patent scheme) for the benefit of the community.
- Promotes and preserves local arts and culture, through focussed efforts in those disciplines.
The university will be locally grounded, with local population and its needs. It is based on mutual need, for people can pay for information they need, and university personnel can earn a good living in turn.
- Local human/animal deceases, or pandemics (bird-flu or) are studied and expertise provided to the community immediately.
- Knowledge about local history, archeology, geology, zoology, botany is preserved and researched.
- Promotes technology development for local community, such as agricultural tools (e.g., making of jaggery with improvisations in traditional methods) or industry solutions (e.g., cast iron technology and small, inexpensive improvements).
- Promotes research in the local community, to enable them to solve their own problems in innovative fashion. Any resultant solutions could be marketed/patented (like GNU patent scheme) for the benefit of the community. This is modelled on the so-called "Barefoot College".
- Promotes and preserves local arts and culture, through focussed efforts in those disciplines.
University will promote science and technology in the region.

It will provide training and research foci for college and school teachers and students. It will also serve as knowledge center, where national and international experts can converge to interact with local scientists and engineers.

Although local issues get more prominence, they do not overshadow other research/training. Other disciplines, such as mathematics, psychology or business management will be pursued as well, however, with similar local bend.

For example, the university could be involved in teacher's workshops, training other persons (laboratory technicians) from schools, who will avail this facility on payment of fees. Latest research in child/adolescent psychology and its links with education could be pursued, which will improve the grass-root education. Although this deserves an entire new thread on its own. Those who are interested should read Atanu Dey's posts on the topic of education.

Astronomy in Goa - V : Demands on Design.

2007-05-03T21:42:00.000+05:30

Physical Needs

One student asked me for some comments about an Astronomy center in Goa. Here are my comments to her.

In my guide post I had outlined aims of the project and which communities would benefit from the exercise. Based on the answers to the first two, in my subsequent posts on this blog, I outlined activities that could be conducted for school, college and general audiences. Depending upon all these, we would know the physical, electro-mechanical, human and space needs of this project.

We will do this step by step: first work out physical and space needs of this projects. These are most crucial, for astronomy can not be done well from cities, even amateurs gain a world by being in remote, dark locations. No wonder our forefathers were fascinated by stars and we (those who live in light-polluting and claustrophobic cities) miss out on that wonder of stars and the Milky Way Galaxy!

Physical Needs:

Given that general public, students and teachers are going to observe the sky, the prime importance has to be given to an unhindered access to "dark sky" from all sides. Also, given that one would use academic tools, astronomy instruments and expects amateur crowds of variable numbers, it would desirable to split space into a number of smaller areas of variable sizes, which would be accessible to different populations at times desirable.

A well-connected set building which should host the following:
- a library: with books in Konkani, Marathi, English. Books such as "Hubble Images" are needed for general audiences, whereas some elementary textbooks from Indira Gandhi Open University would be great for college students. Astronomy and science magazines and newsletters from around the world could be obtained and provided to the interested students.
- Two display halls: poster exhibitions, astronomy and science-game rooms, general information displays (history, geography and ideas in Astronomy), introduction to historical figures, local communities and their small projects can be highlighted.
- Three lecture rooms of variable sizes, say roughly 30, 80, 250, to allow for a large audiences in some interesting demonstrations or lectures. The display halls could doubled up as a lecture room of 200+ capacity, if built with appropriate scale in mind, they could be interconnected using video link, to allow even larger audiences. The lecture halls could be connected to the internet, allowing for video lectures, internet demonstrations, and virtual observations.
- Demonstration labs for electronics and computers. Electronics laboratory would enable students to study, calibrate and use astronomy instruments. The computing laboratory is especially keeping in mind virtual observatory concept (remote observing and online content access).
- Office space for visiting astronomers and lecturers: they could keep their belongings in these spaces, share material with support staff of the center, and keep a regular contact.
- Observatory platform: space for a couple of telescopes. Ideally, one would like a single large telescope (16 inch) for serious amateur work, and perhaps four smaller telescopes for popular amateur demonstrations. The large telescope could be housed in the main building. To maintain light levels and low disturbance from crowds, perhaps this part could be a little away from remaining building.
Open flat spaces: preferrably not green lawns, but higher from the ground to avoid stray animals entering. Perhaps we could use the terrace space over the above-mentioned lecture halls? We need to allow space for large crowd to sit outside and lean skywards to watch celestial events. We could build a terrace sloping gently (15 degrees?) towards south. This would align us towards to the Earth's axis, as we keep our feet towards the South. Stars would follow from left to the right. Given the slight tilt, it would be easier to watch the skys using a simple cushions.

One would expect spaces with downward-facing lights, which will emit very little amount of light towards the sky and would be just enough for one to watch where they walk.
Such flat spaces could be divided in multiple different locations, so that students, amateur astronomers, and general public can be segregated depending upon their needs of observations. All could use smaller (8 inch) telescopes and binoculars for their sky gazing.

Planetarium: A mobile planetarium could have a semi-permanent base in this center. It could visit various localities within Goa with a pre-planned (on demand) schedule.

Most importantly, we need to plant tall trees all around, so as to cover about 15 degrees altitude. This should cut down glows from large cities, it would also isolate us from oncoming traffic lights and any habitation disturbances. Trees such as jackfruits, Peepal and Neelgiri are good along with dense shrubs found in Goa. They grow fast, so no one needs to tend them much. We would avoid cash-crop trees, such mangoes, not only for obvious reasons, but also to save ourselves from animals, such as monkeys!

Average and the statistics of Poisson

2007-04-27T22:49:00.001+05:30

Devan produced a lot of images using Poisson Statistics. But he could only see 20% frames with any photon at all. Why, can we not explain this using average number of photons from the sky?

Yes, we can. We get only average of 0.17 photon over all pixels of the detector put together. This gives a probability of ~84% to have zero photons incident on the detector. That is perfectly acceptable! Statistics can be trusted :p

Astronomy in Goa - IV : General Public

2007-04-25T01:13:00.000+05:30

This post is a part of a series on Astronomy Center activities in Goa. I have outlined the aims and target communities for it, read my guide post for details. The current post will outline main activities for general public. The next post will examine the physical and other needs of all such astronomy activities.

It is highly recommended that activities for general public to be carried out while conducting school- and college-level activities. Not only is it easy to do so, but without such activities general public will not be aware about such a center and will not support it at the local level.

Goa is poor on astronomy awareness, as is most of India, even though Goans are quite enterprising and curious people. There are hardly any facilities for astronomy activities, except for Public Astronomy Observatory, a group in Panjim that does lots of good work. So, there is much to do with such a center in Goa.

The aims is to spread awareness about astronomy, physics, and general science related to both, to general public, students, policy makers, alike.

Activities:

Astronomy awareness camps (mobile and stationary in Surla): To educate common public about important astronomy events, regular calendar events, etc.
Regular in-house open-air (naked-eye) astronomy activities: meteor showers, eclipses, and like. This is to maintain public involvement in astronomy center.
Planetarium-based activities: Much of the Summer and Monsoon season, when skies are not clear, a mobile planetarium would be an ideal instrument of astronomy display. A mobile planetarium has been active in IUCAA, Pune, and has been a successful venture.
Panel discussions and lectures by experts on topics of interest for general audience
To question astrology and dubious connections used to sell it using astronomical terminology. This is to clearly identify difference in science of astronomy/astrophysics and what different astrological practices follow. In particular, calendars, astronomical events of planets and terminologies.
To highlight astronomy education and research issues in front of common public and policy makers. This is to advocate more participation in national and international activities, such as Olympiads, telescopes, collaborations, etc.

In the subsequent parts I will outline physical and other needs to conduct the activities for three types of audiences.

Astronomy in Goa - III : School Activities

2007-04-25T00:18:00.000+05:30

This post is a part of a series on Astronomy Center activities in Goa. I have outlined the aims and target communities for it, read my guide post for details. The current post will outline main activities for school children. The next post will examine the physical and other needs of such astronomy activities.

It is highly recommended that activities for general public to be carried out while conducting school- and college-level activities. Not only is it easy to do so, but without such activities, general public will not be aware about such a center and will not support it at the local level. One will have to sell the above activities for general public in some form or another. To think of it, school/college audience is only a part of "general public".

Coming to specific activities for school students:

non-academic:

a) To do simple naked-eye astronomy: get acquainted with stars, planets, comets, and meteors.

b) Seasons and astronomical bodies,

both the above activities are expected to stimulate astronomy discussions and general background.

c) To recount history of sky monitoring and astronomy, in India and abroad.

d) Stories of famous Indian astronomers and mathematicians.

f) To study the connection with science/physics through simple examples.

g) To understand role of astronomical observations in calendars

academic

a) To develop graded astronomy curriculum material:

For 8th to 10th level classes. We need to start from simple concepts of Earth as a rotating, spherical body.
Learn about the Sun as a star, moon as a satellite, and planets as satellites of the Sun.
Gradually, we need to introduce higher concepts along with simple physical interpretation (for example, mass of the Sun).

b) Simple naked-eye activities can be used to do geometrical interpretation of events, such as planet motions, Earth's rotation axis, Moon's motion around itself and the Earth, etc.

c) Techniques of detailed observations of planets, stars, and other heavenly bodies using a telescope and CCDs. Understand the difference between eyes and an external 'detector'.

d) Relating measured quantities to class-room physics and mathematics learnt previously by students. In particular: concept of angles, motions of planets using Kepler's laws, radii of and distances to planets assuming some parameters, etc.

e) Conduct astronomy quizzes and competitions.

f) Encourage astro-photography and virtual observatory : internet-based observations using web-cam connected telescopes and astrophotography.

g) Print and digital media interaction to reach wider audience.

Community-based activities

a) Students could help spread astronomy awareness at their homes.

b) Elder students could work with junior students to explain science and techniques of astronomy.

Astronomy in Goa-II : College Activities

2007-04-24T21:42:00.000+05:30

This post is a part of a series on Astronomy Center activities in Goa. I have outlined the aims and target communities for it, read my guide post for details. The current post will outline only activities for college students. The subsequent posts will discuss school and general public, and examine the physical and other needs of such astronomy activities.

It is highly recommended that activities for general public to be carried out while conducting college-level activities. Not only it is easy, without such activities, general public will not be aware about such a center and will not support it at the local level. One will have to sell the above activities for general public in some form or another. To think of it, college audience is only a part of "general public".

Coming to specific activities for college students:

non-academic:

a) To do simple naked-eye astronomy: get acquainted with stars, and planets.
b) Naked eye observations, particularly of comets, meteors, planets, and other variable objects,

both the above activities are expected to stimulate astronomy discussions and general background.

c) To recount history of sky monitoring and astronomy, in Indian and abroad.

d) To understand connection between astronomy and religion in India.

e) Stories of famous Indian astronomers and mathematicians.

f) To study the growth of science/physics through stories of astronomy and astronomers.

g) To understand role of astronomical observations in calendars

h) To question and contrast astrology from astronomy/astrophysics.

academic

a) To develop graded astronomy curriculum material:
For 11th, 12th and degree level classes. We need to start from simple concepts of stars, planets, moon/sun, etc. gradually, we need to introduce higher concepts along with simple physical interpretation. An ideal starting point for such material will be Indira Gandhi Open University (see their course PHE 15 for astronomy and astrophysics).

b) Simple naked-eye activities can be used to do quantitative analysis of events, such as meteor showers, variable star brightness, etc.

c) Techniques of Quantitative estimation of brightness of stars, planets, etc. using a telescope and CCDs.

d) To make simple measurements of star/planet spectra using narrow filters.

e) Relating measured quantities to class-room physics and mathematics learnt previously by students. In particular: concept of temperature of stars and planets using above spectral measurements, radii of stars assuming temperatures, distances to planets using Newton's laws, binary parameters based on eclipsing binary stars, etc.

f) Conduct astronomy quizzes and competitions.

g) Encourage astro-photography and virtual observatory : internet-based observations using web-cam connected telescopes and astrophotography.

h) Short and long astronomy projects through collaborations with other astronomy institutions, such as IUCAA.

i) Print and digital media interaction to reach wider audience.

Community-based activities

a) Students could help spread astronomy awareness through school-level camps at various schools

b) Elder students could work with junior students to explain science and techniques of astronomy.

Astronomy in Goa - I

2007-04-24T17:40:00.000+05:30

One student asked me for some comments about an Astronomy center in Goa. Here are my comments to her in brief. More detailed comments for individual parts (College, schools, etc) are on separate blogs.

I believe much of this material would be useful for similar centers in India, although there will be local variations.

First let us focus on

What are the aims of the project?
What communities will benefit from the exercise?
To achieve these, what activities will be conducted? Based on the answers to the first two, one would develop the 3rd answer. Depending upon all the answers, you would know
What are the physical, electro-mechanical, human and space needs of this project?

Goa is poor on astronomy awareness, as is most of India, even though Goans are quite enterprising and curious people. There are hardly any facilities for astronomy activities, except for Public Astronomy Observatory, group in Panjim that does lots of good work. So, there is much to do with such a center in Goa.

Briefly:

1) According to me, aims should be to

spread awareness about astronomy, physics and general science (related to both) to general public, students, collegians, and teachers.
help students acquire astronomy/physics skills using direct experimentation, and appreciate how much astronomy can be a part of their daily activity.
impart training in astronomy techniques and ignite students' faculty of inquiry.
train general teachers in schools and colleges to provide general astronomy course in curriculum.

2) Communities targeted are:

general public
school and college students
school and college teachers

Awareness levels, requirements and activities of all groups vary, hence our approach to them is going to be different.

3) Activities:
a) general public:
i) astronomy awareness camps (mobile and stationary in Surla)
ii) open-air (naked-eye) astronomy activities: meteor showers, eclipses
iii) planetarium-based activities: a mobile planetarium has been active in IUCAA, Pune, and has been a successful venture.
iv) panel discussions and lectures by experts for general audiances
v) to question astrology and dubious practices used.

b) schools (students and teachers)

i) simple exercises to illustrate relation between mathematics and planetary movements, meteors, eclipses, etc.
ii) physical measurements of planets, moon and the Sun and stars using naked-eye measurements, telescopes, and binoculors.
iii) curriculum course development for students of secondary school, to increase awareness about astronomy and astro-physics.
iv) to specifically question assumptions in astrology, and contrast it with astrophysics.

c) college (students and teachers)

the above practices, however at a higher expertise level. one needs more detail, more sophistication, etc. for example, a college student (esp. an engineer) would appreciate instruments used in astronomy and their detail. they may like to demonstrate radio telescope and understand instrumentation in space-based telescopes.

QUARK'07

2007-03-16T18:13:00.000+05:30

Our campus celebrates the tech-fest over the next 3 days, 17-19 March. Visit QUARK'07 website for more.

We are organising an Astronomy Workshop for participants, where I will present one talk. I am also involved with Image Processing contest, where students will be grilled for their skills with images.

Modified algorithm for UVIT frames

2007-03-15T12:34:00.000+05:30

Make a table (dimentions 4x1000) for Poisson statistic. x-axis is average photons at a pixel P_ij and Y-axis is the number of photons. X-axis values range from P_ij = 0.001, 0.002,... 1.000, in steps of 0.001 (1000 values). Y-axis has 4 values, which are equal to probabilities of number of photons incident = 0, 1, 2, 3.

For example: at x = P_ij = 0.1, the four values (corresponding to probability of 0, 1, 2, and 3 photons incident on that pixel) are P₀ = e^-0.1 (= 0.9048), P₁ = 0.1 P₀ (= 0.09048), P₂ = 0.01 P₀/2 (=0.0045242), and P₃ = 0.001 P₀/6 (= 0.0001508).

For a given frame_k, find a random number R equally distributed between 0 and 1. For each pixel

If R <>0, then number of photons for that pixel = 0.

If (P₀ + P₁) > R > P₀, then number of photons = 1; and if (P₀+P₁+P₂) > R > (P₀ +P₁) then number of photons is 2; and so on.

For the next frame, compute a new random number R and repeat the above steps again...

UV image simulation from Galex

2007-03-12T15:08:00.000+05:30

This is an algorithm to generate frames from Galex image.

You make a table (dimentions 4x1000) for Poisson statistic. x-axis is average photons at a pixel P_ij and Y-axis is the number of photons. X-axis values range from P_ij = 0.001, 0.002,... 1.000, in steps of 0.001 (1000 values). Y-axis has 4 values, which are equal to probabilities of number of photons incident = 1, 2, 3, 4.

For example: at x = P_ij = 0.1, the four values (corresponding to probability of 1,2,3 and 4 photons incident on that pixel) are 0.1, 0.035, 0.002, and 0.0005.

For a given frame_k, for each pixel

Find a random number R equally distributed between 0 and 1.

If R > 0.1, then number of photons for that pixel = 0. If R > 0.035, 0.002 and 0.0005, then number of photons incident on that pixel are 1, 2, 3.

Program out of beta phase

2007-01-09T19:16:00.000+05:30

Oh well, finally my program on MHD simulations works ok. It was tested in different ways and now produces proper FITS files and plots. No bugs so far in this version. It reads inputs from a preset input file and then processes the data file listed in the input file, based on other inputs from the same file.

Our time table is up, classes started today for me, but I am away from Goa. I will return to a full weeks' schedule, with one more new course this semester. So, this blog will see much more on Electromagnetic Fields and Waves.

MHD simulations

2007-01-08T00:43:00.000+05:30

I have been working with MHD simulations of my collaborator, Miguel de Avillez. My C++ program still sticks like a sore thumb, even after 6 months of work. There is still a bug in reading/plotting the data. However, I think I am on top of it for now. The next step is to create position to velocity maps for comparison with Miguel's own column density plots.

Human Tracking on Campus (update)

2006-11-15T18:30:00.000+05:30

Students returned here again. This time they had prepared a lot more for display. They have now decided, as I suggested, to reduce the size of the gadget that everyone would carry with them.

As per the original design, the signal generator gadget sends digital codes as an identification for an individual sender. The transmission is at a given higher frequency, using FM. This would mean that all receiving stations (which are used in triangulation) operate at one frequency, and a person's id is the digital signal sent at that frequency.

Now, we will use individual frequency transmission as an id. we may have to do further tricks, since this might mean very narrow bands and FM using highly accurate filters, etc. one could explore if we could do a crude digital signaling. One could just change the ON/OFF frequency of individual receivers, providing another way of identification...

This circuitry could work close to 65 MHz, providing most of the amplifiers and filters that we need for our radio telescope ;-)

Amateur Radio Telescope at 61 MHz

2006-11-13T16:00:00.000+05:30

We finally tested the interference environment around BITS using a TV Yagi antenna. This was at 3 pm on Monday 13th November, 2006.

The frequency region around 60-70 MHz appeared the most calm of all, particularly 61-62 MHz. We need about 500 KHz bandwidth, and we will keep it on 61 MHz. The band at 120-130 MHz appeared to be good as well. It is possible to utilize the same antenna and receiver system at 122 MHz as well, just in case there was intermittent terrestrial source at 61 MHz.

Making A Human Tracker

2006-10-16T11:41:00.000+05:30

Students are eager to build a human tracker system in the campus. They want each person to carry a transmitter wherever s/he goes. Multiple towers will receive their signals and convey this reception to the central computer. The computer will time the arrivals with GPS unit, and locate the emitter by simple triangulation. The computer can track the location on a map for an easy display.

Students wanted to know if this was feasible. They had ideas of using high-freq dishes, radio-id tags, etc. However, I suggested them to build a system at low frequencies, which will be less prone to blockage. This is of concern, since the system will otherwise fail if the person reaches in a classroom.

We are not sure about how much of signal is needed to make it detectable at the receiving stations, but we are initially going to play with a system working over less than 300 mtrs, using simple yaggi antennas.

Teaching listless lists...

2006-10-09T23:19:00.000+05:30

How Does One Teach Totally Disconnected Students?

I am about to teach my students something about linked lists, a fascinating topic thanks to Donald Knuth's book ("The Art of Computer Programming"). It is apparently an unfinished book, Knuth keeps updating it all the while, Ramprasad tells me. Would my students read it? Anyway, I just finished the logic behind the linked lists, stackes, queues, and deques ('decks' as they are called). Here is what is stuck in my foggy brain:

One tries to process data inside the computer, most likely it is some kind of a data table.
Not only the data, but the interconnection between various elements are of importance, we process the information related to these inter-relationships.
For example, a 1-dimensional array of data could be sorted or searched...
The data could also be a 2-D image, or some higher dimensional object. Or it could have a tree-like structure, or even more complex...
So, a linked list representing all the data is the most general type: stacks, queues, deques.
Ah, and lastly, I learnt to pronounced 'deque' correctly (it is like 'deck', dummy!)

There are some gory details of malloc/calloc that I have been reading, oh well. I will use them and then write more about them...

Making an Amateur Radio Telescope

2006-10-06T21:58:00.000+05:30

Radio Interferrometer

Today I detailed the entire telescope project with Anita. The standard components will be:

Two antennas, separated by about 100 meters. To begin with, of course, we will start with one antenna. Signal frequency of 40/60 MHz +- 5 MHz
Pre-amplifier will be required in at least one case, to boost the signal by 20 dB and carry it over 100 meters. Signal freq 40/60 MHz +- 5 MHz.
RF to IF conversion followed by an appropriate filter: 0-2 MHz band chosen.
IF amplification, possibly two amplifiers back to back for 40 dB or so gain: signal freq. 0-2 MHz.
Phase shifter and adder (with 90 degrees phase difference), followed by a detector. The output is a amplitude time series at the rate of 1/16 second.

This kind of project requires a team of students, possibly 8 students working on different aspects simultaneously. Complex job, but it will be fun if we invest their time in it...

Images and Fourier Analysis

2006-10-06T08:39:00.000+05:30

We want to teach students to understand the concept of Fourier spectrum and its usage in image processing using Octave. Though students know formulae, they have no physical understanding of Fourier domain and how to use coefficient to gain something useful from an image or signal. We have simple programs to clarify some fundamental ideas about Fourier domain.

I created programs for their use:

Simple routines to create images with sinusoidal waves. They should understand the concept of 'spatial waves' and 'spatial frequencies'.
Then students are asked to look at a simple circular step function in an image and its Fourier Transform (Sinc function plotted using SQRT). They are expected to vary the amplitude and size of the step function in the image and understand the correspondence with the Sinc function in the Fourier spectrum.
Students are then given two Gaussians of different widths, with some separation. One can now use Fourier filters to smooth the image. As one throws away 'higher spatial frequencies', one would see some details lost. How much of smoothing leads to which details being lost?
Finally, we use a textbook image to grasp the idea that different 'structures' in an image are nothing but grey-level variations of certain spatial sizes. These sizes correspond to 'spatial wavelengths'.