A Tribute to the Master

Can one become an admiration for a nation? Can one man find a place permanently in the hearts of a billion people? I often think that he might. But it is ephemeral. As soon as the person lost the shine of his skills and talent, he no longer can maintain that admiration or fan following. But today, after watching the historic cricket match, I have come to know that my notions are a fallacy. Thousands of people thronged to Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium, rest of the nation was before the TV screens. Unlike the common matches, this one has marked something different bounded emotionally to the Indian and Cricket folk. This was the last match of the greatest batsman of his generation, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

For the past one week or so, I’ve been hearing only one word everywhere, be it in Media, Internet or Hangouts. It’s “Sachin, Sachin and Sachin…” The whole nation had been eagerly waiting to capture those scintillating and riveting performances from his bat which would not appear in the future. And the master had lived up to his fans’ expectations. I wonder “What makes this man so special that puts him on par with the rest of the Cricketing world and the unrelenting praise he gets from a nation.” It is his perseverance, dedication and moreover his moral values as a human being. He maintained the same composure during times of hardships and the same aplomb during his heydays. He became a role model for the many not only in Cricket but also in other fields.
For India, cricket means Sachin. You ask anybody from a child to an old man about cricket and the first word you can hear is Sachin. His aforesaid qualities have elevated him to that position and he always maintains them. There were times when people wanted to see his inclusion in the team despite his poor performances. They believed that his presence gave them a hope of winning, whether he scored a ton or a zero. He’d started cricket as his profession, religion, way of life and everything (“Cricket is Oxygen to me” said Sachin). And today this man became Cricket. People are hard to imagine the game without him. They are unable to believe that he is retiring. Already many has an expression, “Crickettt without Sachinnn?” Today, his emotional speech at the end of the match has made many to roll down the tears from their eyes including his. He just couldn’t control his emotional attachment that he has with the sport and with the fans. I have just got impressed with his speech. From his Coach to Photographers, Family to Friends (childhood to team mates), he has thanked everyone who directly or indirectly involved in his cricket life.
We will always cherish the moments that you have presented, and, whether you play or not you will be in the hearts of a billion. You have etched a special kind of memories that are indelible forever. I wish your records to be intact in the coming generations. And India wishes you all the very best for your next innings of life. Thank you Great man for your 24 X 365 entertainment (It’s not a hyperbole). Kudos SRT.
And finally as the display shows: LEGENDS NEVER RETIRE…

Why are your friends more popular than you?

DO YOU ever feel like your friends are more popular than you are? That may be because it is true—for nearly everyone. This odd result, dubbed the "friendship paradox", has most recently been observed to apply on Twitter. When researchers from the University of Southern California looked at 5.8m microbloggers (and 194m links between them) they found that, on average, both the people a user follows and, worse, those who follow him, have more followers than he does. How can this be?

The friendship paradox was first identified in 1991 by Scott Feld, a sociologist working at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Back then, of course, Dr Feld was looking at real-world social networks rather than online ones. Then, last year, scientists from Cornell University confirmed that the result holds for Facebook's active users (721m people at the time of the research, joined by 69 billion virtual bonds of friendship). In fact, it obtains for any network where some members are more popular than others. And it stems from basic arithmetic.

Consider a simple social network composed of four people: Alice, Bob, Chloe and Dave. Alice's only friend is Bob. Bob is also friends with both Chloe and Dave, who are friends with each other, but not with Alice. This means that Alice has one friend (Bob); Chloe and Dave each have two friends (one another and Bob); and Bob has three. On average, then, each person in the network has two friends (eight friends divided by four people). But now consider how many friends each person's friends have (in other words, friends of friends). Alice has one friend, Bob, who in turn has three friends. Chloe's friends are Bob, who has three friends, and Dave, who has two, which means that Chloe's friends have five friends between them (even though their lists of friends overlap). The situation is analogous for Dave. Bob's friends, Alice, Chloe and Dave, have five friends in all. So the total number of friends of friends is 18. But the total number of friends in the network is eight, as before. So the average number of friends of friends (ie, how many friends each person's friends have) is 2.25 friends each (18 divided by eight), more than the two friends, on average, of the four people in the network. The reason, of course, is that Bob, who has most friends in the first place, is also counted most often in the friends-of-friends category, raising the average. The same is true for other networks: a few well-connected individuals have more friends than most people, and they skew the average for everyone in whose network they appear (which, because of their connectedness, is a lot of people).

This number-crunching has some intriguing consequences—other than to justify not getting worked up about your relative social status. During the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, for instance, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, kept tabs on a large group of randomly picked Harvard undergraduates. They also monitored the people those participants named as friends. Remarkably, the friends became ill about two weeks before the random undergraduates, probably because they were, on average, better connected. With the world only imperfectly prepared for a pandemic, being able to spot trends in this way could be useful.

This article is extracted from The Economist Magazine (Online content).

In between 2012 and 2013 1/4

It’s been considerably a long time (4 months) since I’ve updated my blog. Probably I’ve been searching for a suitable content to post, but couldn’t found. Now I’m posting about myself, the things that occurred to me and by me in between one and a quarter years (as the title indicates). I couldn’t have posted this, if the year had gone as I expected. But, why would I be here if everything (at least few of them) went in the way I’d trod on. Let me recap the year(s) that gone by.

No doubt the year 2012 was an annus mirabilis for all, because it is the host for many major events to take place. Even I’d anticipated many things to be done in this year at least for me. The New Year was kicked-off with full vigor and brand new hopes by sloughing off the dreadful and unfavorable situations of the previous years apart and continuing the optimistic view of the things. The prime things that I set for this year were leaving the work and continuing the education though both are interdependent. This whole year I embarked on a journey that made me to land in the same place where I was earlier. According to the Physics the total work done was a naught, a zero. The journey was “Acing the CAT and getting into any of the IIMs (mostly old ones)”. In January, I just devised my own strategy to tackle the CAT, but I didn’t make any other alternatives. What if I not clear the CAT? What if my journey ended without reaching the destination? There are many options out there like XAT, IIFT etc. which give you almost the same level of institutions to pursue the business education. I didn’t even think of them. I totally engrossed in the CAT. How foolish I was? I became a monomaniac, a nerd, a person who lacks harmony with other things except with one. In the interim, I missed a lot of fun, a lot of things to learn, few of the friends and many invaluable things.

After sketching the layout for my plan I started to unfold the preparation in a piecemeal. I made my CAT gambit by learning the vocabulary. Started with the gargantuan word list it was ended with taking the most uncertain CAT with many revisions, mocks and reviews in between. In February, I took my massive word list book out and glared at it as if it can be completed though reading regularly. In the incipient stages, I managed to read 50 words per day (not entire day but only 1-1.5 hrs) but as the days gone, I increased my pace to 100 per day and completed the book somehow in mid March. Even though I did take the letter-tests, I couldn’t take the whole WL tests and I don’t know how many I could remember. I was just rejoicing myself for getting rid of the tedious word crunch. Then there was a lull in the regular activity to decide between Quants and Verbal to start with. Eventually, I moved to Verbal to get a hold on it since it was my weak area and left the Quants behind (though not completely). Actually, I don’t have any good book for Verbal, so I purchased one which I’d thought suitable. Later I realized that some topics are too easy to tackle with, comparing the level of difficulty in the actual CAT. I also referred some online material which is freely available in few of the sites. That really helped me. In the Verbal section I always used to get mixed score with many ups and downs like an undulating tide. One thing that is peculiar to me (which I don’t like) is “Sometimes, I am too optimistic, turn out to be a Pollyanna rather” and I think why my score wouldn’t be on upside in the actual exam. Having this kind of notion, I didn’t take that wave-like score as a serious issue, but in the long term it became hard for me. I became complacent when I reach the other end of the book, questions were easy and I got most of them right. Simultaneously, I started off the Quants also, but dedicated most of the time to Verbal. As Quants was my forte, I spent less time on it comparing to Verbal. With a positive feeling I wound up preparing for Quants as well as for Verbal. But one has to know that there is no such ending when preparing for the most elusive CAT. Instead it should end with taking the CAT and clearing the GD & PI. You ought to cover every tiny topic as there is no concrete syllabus pattern. I planned to order other books, but there was no sufficient time. In the mean time, I received the material from one of the online preparation sites (needless to mention the name). I couldn’t complete even this material. There were two reasons to this. One was the number of books I’d poured in for my preparation and the second one was my smugness and the monotony of preparation.  I must confess one more thing that fostered my preparation- Work in the office. Till June, I had no burden of work (thanks to the facile tasks that I got). But after that it got increased gradually.

July was looming over. I had not yet started taking the mocks which is the core part of any preparation. Then I registered myself in one of the major coaching centers for the CAT. Already three of the mocks were over by the time I’d regd. In the initial mocks (three to four) my performance was abysmal. I didn’t even think of those figures of scores. Later, I started knowing my Achilles’ heel and initialized the healing process. After this process I used to get some good manageable scores and percentiles. But still something was wrong. I had to bridge the gap that inhibiting my performance. In the mocks I had been concentrating only on certain topics that I feel easy to manage. In order to get good %iles I had to confront the topics that were alien to me. I started to revise the entire syllabus once again. On weekends I could take the mocks and on week days revision. It was continued till the end. In few of the tests I got as high as 97 and 98 which are barely enough for one to land in the IIMs. Anyhow I too could see that magic figures. I conjured up many things of getting into the IIM and completing my Business education. After some mocks these figures getting vanished and all I could see were the mediocre numbers, lackluster performance and my wretched condition. I thought what on earth could appease me? What brings back my heydays? Which things re-invigorate me?  Then I head to my native place as it was a long time since I had been there. I missed couple of the mocks which when I was in my native place. I thought of taking them there only, but could not. When I returned to the place where I’m currently living, I almost forgot all the techniques and tips of the exam. Later I regained them through the process of mocks and revision. After few more mocks I got two back to back big numbers which hitherto I didn’t see and I couldn’t even think of. In was in the top hundred (in the country). These were things that brought back my life. Three quarters of the mocks were over and left with a handful. Percentiles were again reaching the troughs and my morale was getting down. Then came the mind blowing CAT. I put my exam on the last before day.  Reviews were started to post on the web sites. There was a mixed response on the difficulty level though there were no surprises in the paper pattern. This was the time to maintain the composure and the equanimity. The last couple of mocks had gone smoothly. I had also taken the missed mocks (not all) though with little seriousness. I was off to work for almost a week before my date. Finally, the most awaiting day of the year came in.

On the day of the exam, I tried to be as cool as possible. After that lot of traditional process, I sat in my place of exam with a computer terminal in front of me and surrounded by fellow exam takers. During the exam, at least in the first session, I thought I was doing well. But when the following session appeared, things look dark. But, I came out of the centre with a positive feeling. Later I discussed the paper with my friend and I was shocked. Out of the four to five Q’s we discussed I’d made two of them wrong. I decided not to discuss the remaining whatever I could remember. Still I was in full hope of getting the magic numbers. Things to be done had piled up at my work place. I took up the work seriously and started to finish it up in the stipulated time. One and half months were gone.  Another day of anticipation had come. Results were out. I didn’t see immediately. I headed to the office and handed over my number to one of my friends. A blow, a big blow…

I couldn’t. The useless number, not even nearer to the number I wanted to see. I wouldn’t be in the list. A mere 94- %ile. Future looked bleak. What left for me to do? My one year of efforts, sleepless nights, joyless days became futile. I was in vain. What actually happened? Lack of profound analysis of the mocks, not being time-bound and the wicked smugness. Yes, at times I was engulfed in smugness when I got those big numbers. Gone is gone. I regretted myself for some days and things were normal again. I yet to decide my future course. For three months after the big blow, I let the time go in idle. I did nothing apart from going to work and coming from work neither did I go to hometown. I don’t know what to do. I was failed once. Should I try again or Is it better to take the different path? I pondered over what to do. Then I got the famous apothegm from Thomas A. Edison…

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”. Why should I give up when others are trying multiple times? I never indeed I will not.

This time I have not yet started but will start soon. This time I’ll made it fail-proof by selecting eclectic range of choices, rather than mulling over one subject.

 "Open the window. It's a big world out there!"