Abhishek Dutta

I recently started reading “The World of Mathematics” book by J.R. Newman. Here, I collect some of my favorite paragraphs from this book.

Chapter 13: Srinivasa Ramanujan

• “He would probably have been a greater mathematician if he had been caught and tamed a little in his youth; he would have discovered more that was new, and that, no doubt, of greater importance. On the other hand, he would have been less of a Ramanujan, and more of a European professor and the loss might have been greater than the gain.“

Chapter 11: The Prince of Mathematicians (Gauss)

• “Gauss resolved to follow their [Archimedes and Newton] great example and leave after him only finished works of art, severely perfect, to which nothing could be added and from which nothing could be taken away without disfiguring the whole. The work itself must stand forth, complete, simple, and convincing, with no trace remaining of the labor by which it had been achieved. A cathedral is not a cathedral, he said, till the last scaffolding is down and out of sight. … Few, but ripe.”
• “Shortly after his seventh birthday Gauss entered his first school, …. run by a virile brute, one Buttner, whose idea of teaching the hundred or so boys in his charge was to thrash them into such a state of terrified stupidity that they forgot their own names.”
• ” ‘He is beyond me,’ Buttner said; ‘I can teach him nothing more’ …. “

@todo : Wait for some more amazing paragraphs about the beautiful minds.

This year, my university turned 50 and I received three red tulip seeds as a gift. I planted the three tulip seeds yesterday and am eagerly waiting for April/May 2012 when these tulips will bloom. These red tulips will definitely be a beautiful reminder of the year that was left behind.

Happy New Year and best wishes for this new year to bring happiness and good health to everybody.

Last Updated: Mar. 10, 2012. First Published On: Dec. 28, 2011

“Common, skip the sections that seem less important“, I consoled myself while frantically preparing for the final board exams of Class XII. The syllabus for Physics and Chemistry were huge. Therefore, my study pattern got more careless as the shadow of the exam conspired for a war with my ignorance.

I stayed in the student hostel during Class XI/XII study at DPS (Dharan, Nepal). Frequent study breaks were a good way to recharge during those days of intensive exam preparation. During one such study break, I noticed the following anonymous quotation written on one of my friends study desk:

Skipping steps gives the illusion of speed.

It was like a traffic sign warning me of the consequences of my frantic exam preparation. Now I realise that I would also have been a casualty of “skipping steps” had I not seen this quotation.

In this blog post, I plan to keep a record of all such powerful and concise thoughts (without the related background story )

1. Organizers didn’t make any money; their poverty was proof of their integrity. – Barack Obama
2. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T. S. Eliot
3. There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. – Josh Billings
4. He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie. – Mark Twain
5. If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton
6. The world seems full of randomness but everything is planned. – Anonymous
7. I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby
8. If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. – Abraham Lincoln
9. Fatigue is the best pillow. – Benjamin Franklin
10. By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong. – Charles Wadsworth
11. Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows. – John Betjeman (From Movie: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas)
12. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. – Winston Churchill
13. I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. – Blaise Pascal
14. The moderns do not realize modernity. – G.K.Chesterton
15. First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. – M. K. Gandhi

I feel that quotations are the best way to convey wisdom. I will keep adding more interesting quotations to this blog post. Visit wikiquote if you want to explore this powerful medium of conveying wisdom.

Last Updated:Apr. 26, 2012

Caution: This plot is just for fun and should not be taken seriously. I did it when I got bored with my research one weekend

I have meeting with my supervisors after every two weeks (bi-monthly meetings). I email the meeting agenda to my supervisors before every meeting. After finishing the meeting, I again email the meeting minutes (summary of important discussions during the meeting) to my supervisors. I have done this for last 6 months and I suddenly realised that I can use this data to assess the research activity level during my PhD.

The agenda and minute of each meeting has a set of bullet points. The number of bullet points corresponding to agenda and minute of each meeting represents the level of my research activity in the past two weeks before that meeting date. If I am very active and working hard on some research topic, the next meeting is bound to have a lot of bullet points corresponding to related discussion during the meeting. I use this count of meeting activity as a way to estimate my research activity. It is interesting to see that these plots somehow succeeded to depict the amount of work that I have been doing during my PhD research.

This way of measuring research activity has some serious limitations:

• Not all bullet points in agenda and minute have same weight. Some points in agenda can take about one hour to discuss while others can be resolved in just few minutes. Therefore, it is not fair to attribute equal contribution of each bullet point towards overall research activity level.
• Serious discussion on a topic during meetings requires very good understanding of different aspects of that research topic. Developing such a level of understanding can take several weeks. Therefore, the underlying assumption that activity during a meeting is a result of work done in the past two weeks is not always true.

In spite of these limitations, I decided to create this plot because it gives a good (although not very accurate) overview of my PhD research activity. I am waiting for the last meeting at the end of my PhD and wondering how such a plot for 4 years would look like.

Time is valuable in its every unit. This fact is beautifully portrayed by this poem which appeared in the August 2005 issue of the WISDOM India magazine. Some poems, stories and thoughts had a very strong impact on me. This poem is one of them.

To realize the value of one year

Ask a student who has failed in his exam.

To realize the value of one month

Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week

Ask an editor of a weekly.

To realize the value of one day

Ask a daily wage labourer.

To realize the value of one hour

Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute

Ask the person who has missed the train.

To realize the value of one second

Ask the person who has survived in an accident.

To realize the value of one milli second

Ask the person who has won the silver medal in Olympics.

Today I visited the Pulchowk Campus (the college where I studied for my undergraduate engineering degree). I was amazed to see these posters on the notice board.

I had put these posters few years ago to publicize the launch of two of our projects : iSnake and uIOE. I had never imagined that these posters will stick to their original position for such a long time. The vibrant community of students post a large number of posters and notices regularly on these campus notice boards. So I had thought that my project publicity posters would get covered by these new posters and notices.

Thanks to all the students at Pulchowk Campus for not removing my posters. This is probably the reason why these projects websites still get a large number of visitors. I still retain the original electronic version of these posters: iSnake launch poster, uIOE launch poster. I smiled with great joy and had nostalgia when I saw these fading posters stick to their original place. A wonderful and unexpected experience.