Monday, January 28, 2013

Isn't it easy..

how simple is it, to make fun of any and everything. To ignore it as a small talk and let it go. While most often  its that small thing which we ignore, that happens to be the key to all our fussed up self. Well its not exactly what I am gonna prove, (on second thoughts - can it be proved ? some other time I'll try ), but this is the broader view I stumbled on by today's one such line, which was otherwise ignored by most as just an aberration in the high tech theory.

 Well so it started as a discussion in a course by Prof. Narayanan,  teaching matroid and he said  "I considered matroid to be very difficult subject", while emphasizing the fact that matroid is just different, its not tough intrinsically. Well he was telling about how, when he told few Japanese people that he learnt matroid on his own, they were surprised that it is so tough, how can you read it on your own!!.


When the fact is Japanese and Chinese people have a very strong base in matroid, he told and they write all those big big expressions which we otherwise find difficult to understand (Indians maybe he meant) . Anyways I was wondering of the contrast of approach of Indians, Japanese and Chinese --picturing it vividly the entire discussion and expressions when suddenly he seemed to be gripped by some idea.

So he faced us and said " Ok tell me, what do you mean - when you say something is difficult? "
Well someone said " its complicated or something on the lines". He said no its not what I am looking for.  I want to know what is it that you identify as difficult ? Well again someone said " its basically that you are not aware of the treatment" that's all. If you get well versed with the facts and details , would it be difficult still, was the next question? Well all seemed to agree, that it won't be difficult if we are familiar with the concepts behind the work. He further elaborated that we all have made a world for ourselves, consisting of things we know and we look at anything from that world and if unfamiliar we say its tough. While its actually not, what's required is to just go on read all literature and then see from an upper perspective what is the easiest and relevant way out. This is how any research topic should be selected and approached he said.

Then there are things which are so much vast that how to make a sense out of it, is a baffling issue. He said if something is vast, one way is to just make a nice poem or song of all its concept, as we have huge capacity to learn the songs and poems - even in childhood we remembered big big poems, this way you will have memorized everything and would have better say in the subject area. Like he said its pretty easy to learn 32 no. of places of pi (mathematical constant) by a song.

http://www.stevetoner.com/ph/TonerS/mathpi.html based on American Pie song ...

A little googling gave this Poem as well

Now I will a rhyme construct,
By letter count, the young instruct.
Cunningly devised endeavors,
Con it and remember ever.
Widths in circle here you see,
Sketched out in strange obscurity.


 Word-length gives a place of decimal eg first line is made of words of length 3 1 4 1 5 9 so it makes it - 3.14159,  second line is 2 6 5 3 5 and so on gives the 32 places as
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83 279

Now this is something worth checking out.. isn't it!!! Apparently a trivial idea but not if it makes you remember 32 places of Pi .... Definitely it deserves more attention and trials ..

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