Eating food - not so straight forward.

All of us eat something every day. Sometimes, when hungry, sometimes because it is time to eat, sometimes because we are with friends. But taking food or drinks has bearing on our well being. Three important questions can be asked about our eating.

1. When should we eat?
2. What should we eat?
3. How much should we eat?

If any of three is not correctly answered and followed, it should have impact on your well being.

Common sense approach which I can feel, being hinted by many videos, experts is the following.

We should eat when we are hungry. But if you get stuck in social gathering and eating is not due to hunger but due to social obligation, we should take minimal quantity, or may be just pick up something in hand and do'nt eat. That is difficult but desirable.

What we should eat? Depends on individual. By looking at so much of information on Internet, I feel we should prefer plant based whole food which contain lot of fibre. Maintain diversity of items in your food to the extent possible. Avoiding meat and dairy seems to be right choice based on what I hear from many folks. As I am vegetarian since my childhood, so actually do'nt know why meat is so addictive to people. I have seen my friend craving for meat quite a number of times.

How much to eat, is another most important aspect. Before start eating make a judgement about your hunger and separate out a portion which you feel will be good enough. Do this before each time you refill your plate. Eating in portions, makes you eat lesser than your capacity.

If you have suggestions to improve, do write in comments. I will update this note on that basis.

Improving observation for better problem solving skill

I was thinking about why some people are good or bad at research/art of problem solving. It may have to do with observations which one makes. When you attempt again and again on daily basis, the random observations simply becomes less important than the observation which actually lead to insights. All important observations are related and gets consolidated just like completing a jigsaw puzzle. So trying every day to think about a problem, helps in gaining insight.

Another possibility could to practice to keep on mind in state of tranquility (much less random noise). This will also enhance the relevant observations. Meditation - practice of shutting of all your senses to the extent possible (that is why possibly, for meditation one closes eyes, sits down at one place, no music) and simply observing of what goes in the mind without trying to control it, or simply letting mind watch whatever it want e.g. your breathing, removes the noise in mind. Your observation clarity becomes better. You can see what is normally not visible.

I have found that every student or person who has come in my contact has different ability to observe acquired in earlier period. Thus they have a limitation in their ability to solve the problem, unless they further enhance their observation skill.

One possibility, is practicing the meditation as described above and see if they can push their limits.

It seems that this limitations get created due to learning from interactions with people in surroundings since childhood. Parents (one of the two who is having dominant influence on the kid) transfers this ability as well as limitation. Even siblings will have different abilities depending on which parents has dominant influence.

So, now case study where thought limitation is pushed further by meditation (consequently, less no of days of repeated attempts in gaining insight), need to be observed to verify the above hypothesis.

Steps in writing a paper or thesis

For anything you write - report, paper, thesis, we essetially are trying to answer questions which come to ones mind in natural progression. Each para, section, chapter has a purpose and must be an answer to a question. All the questions must emanate from fundamental question which has been the driving force behind the writing.

When writing a technical document, it is important to list the questions which are you answering. Put them in natural progression order. This allows one to write effectively. The questions can be grouped together chapter, section, para wise.

One can break writing into four steps. First - make an outline consisting of chapters, section and subsection titles, write the questions grouped under them for clarity. Try to arrange them in a sequence in which a reader can effectively appreciate your writeup.

Second step - take one section at a time; whatever comes to your head which you want to write, put it in the doc. You need not write explicitly the question being answered, but it should become evident to reader.

Step three - Organise the sentences in sequence keeping effective appreciation by reader in mind. You may have to move sentences around. You will find repetitions coming together. These need to be edited leading to removal of repetition.

During organisation, you will find that somethings are missing. Add the required text.

Fourth step - Take care of singular, plural form of verbs, 'a', 'an" and 'the' and punctuation problems.

Repeat second to fourth steps to improve your manuscript for clarity.

Experience with Aakash Coaching in Kanpur

As usual due to pressure from kids and family, aakash coaching was joined by my daughter. She went through two year of classroom coaching in her XI and XII class. She could not score well and decided to drop a year and decided to join Aakash coaching again. This year also, she could not make it. Based on my observations, I could figure out what happens in the coaching. Put a bit of game theory in your reasoning and it becomes very clear.

The coaching institutes need to make money and they are there to make money and not improve the students' ability so that they have higher probability of qualifying the exams. In case a institute has 200 students and all of them qualify, does it make a difference in thier earning. Probably not. The expected profit maximizes at some value of x% of successful students. This x is about 10%. The choice of x is such that the demand for coaching is maintained. Making it 100% requires much more effort and much less incremental gain.

So normally, what happens, the coaching institutes focus on top 10% and analyses their answers to find why they are giving those answers. They adapt their interactions only on this basis. Consequently, if your kid is not in top 5%, the chances of his success falls drastically. The larger the batch size, the drastic will be the fall. While, all students are capable to qualify but the remedial efforts for them needs more efforts and they are simply left. I am not comfortable with this business mindset of coaching centers. My observation is on the basis of Aakash Coaching in Kanpur. It seems some coachings like super-30, keep this x as 100% and achieve much higher success rate (almost 100%).

Another bad thing which I felt is done in coaching, is to tell students to prepare only for certain stuff which is expected to lead to better score. So, they leave some topics and chapter. While, each students should be directed to study the stuff where he is weaker, thus making him ready for worst case scenario.

Also, a myth is propagated among students that all students are not equally capable. So if 5 to 10% percent are doing well in practice exams, then the others do'nt bother the instructors by making more efforts and then bothering them.

This amazing ecosystems is somehow gets created in the coaching, may be unknowingly, thus large number of students end up in considering themselves incapable or do not perform upto their capability.

In my opinion, DLP with practice examination series may be a good option, unless you are in top 5-10% of coaching class. Only thing to be fixed is to find someone who can study how your kid has arrived at the solution and identify the problem in the concepts and fix them up with appropriate advice.

Alternatively, find a coaching institute where your kid is in top 5% and where he is encouraged to continuously improve. Going into coaching center where already there is large crowd, reduces your chances unless your are in top 5%.

How to prepare for entrance examination?

One of the question which I get from the stufents is about how to prepare for entrance examinations. So decided to put down my thoughts on this.

In entrance examinations, the outcome simply depends on how many correct answers you have given. The correct answers depend on your memory i.e., whether you can memorize the stuff, or whether you understand the concept. Most of the examinations need both skills.

A student should only bother about maximization of the performance. In order to ensure that you can maximize, it important to equally emphasize the entire syllabus. You should be ready for any kinf of question distribution in the paper. Key principle for preparation is to study those topics more which you understand/remembet less. A simple technique could be what is given in next para. Itvbecomes possible due to availability of large number of older questions paper and questions banks.

First of all, get the questions papers and questions banks from last few years. Now, start solving the questions. If you remember/understand and can give the correct answer, move to next question. In case you cannot, go the the book or other reference material and read at least the section completely related to the question. If you can give the answer now, you have added to your memory or understanding. By the time, you finish few question papers, you must have revised quite a good stuff which you were not remembering/understanding well. The method ensures that you do spend your time judiciously on refreshing your memory/understanding of the portions where you need to. Whatever you already remember/understand is skipped saving you critical time.

Basically you are strengthening your memory/understanding of your weaker spots. This leads to more uniform learning and your chances of getting success in the examinations is far higher by spending much shorter time in preparation. The more you do, the better you become. Only initial few questions papers will be tough as at that time you will be ironing out all your deficiencies. Later by practice you can build speed.

The art of nonlinear reading - How to read research notes/papers/books?

Reading a text can be linear - you start reading from page 1 and go to 2, 3, and so on till you finish the text. Novels, Stories etc. are read in this fashion. The sequence does matter as they represent the evolution with time.

When we read a paper, book or notes given by a student, our objective is to understand what the text wants to say. For this kind of technical content, there may be paragraphs which we need to read twice or more; some of the paragraphs need not be read as we already understand what is written in them. Reading the content in an order decided by us is what I call Non-linear reading. It is suitable for studying the research papers, books, notes. I found it very useful for studying the notes/papers given to me by students.

There exist a third category of reading - skimming. In this we just skim at fast pace through entire content just to get an idea of what the text is all about. This does not help in understanding it,  but to decide that whether I should spend time in reading it.

Since the text is usually organized in paragraphs, we can decide the read a para at a time. One can repeat a para if needed. Viewing the index at the beginning is very helpful in deciding what section to be read first. Within a section, we can use skimming to identify which para to study first. I found that this technique allows us to understand the content in perspectives. I could find lot of flaws in papers written by my students when I used non-linear reading, as it seems to allow us to also have a big picture of what we are discussing in the paper.

Every mistake, flaw identified is an opportunity to improve.

In my posts, I have talked about various tips to improve performance. All these can be arrived at by almost anyone by using simple principle. This most important and should have been mentioned first. On daily basis, whenever you find something wrong, or an error, or make a mistake, try to find what can be changed in your habits, procedure, mechanisms so that such wrong/mistake will not happen. This makes you agile and adaptive to continue improve oneself for a desirable life.

Meditation

I thought of writing about it after observing that how people under perform due to stress, take non optimal decisions in given situations. The technique is simple. One need to spend some of the time with himself or herself. One can sit at any location, any stable posture and close the eyes. In fact, the idea is that the environment around you should not stimulate any of the sensory organs. Thus, a peaceful place (no sound), closed eyes (no visual info), any fixed posture (usually padma-asana or any other stable posture will be fine, no spatial awareness through compound functions of senses, no touch and taste), environment devoid of smell is desirable. One need to observe what is going on in mind without interfering with the chain of thoughts. Sometimes, thoughts ceases to exist, that is also fine. This provides the time to your mind to relax and give an opportunity to process the thoughts and ideas which cannot be focused upon in normal routine. It is like clearing backlog. This detachment exercise helps your mind to observe the better options in a given situation and decide a better option than what you can normally do. In order to keep the mind in this better state, doing the practice at regular intervals is advisable. The interval can be adjusted based on the stress levels and lifestyle.

One can also observe the breadth inhalation and exahalation without trying to control them, in their natural form. Idea is basically, do not try to control anything but become aware of whatever is happening.

Another form of meditation is where we do'nt let loose the mind to have its own chain of thoughts. When you want to focus on some work, you can be interrupted by sudden urge to finish something else. When you shift your focus on the other work, you forget to come back and the original work is left unfinished. One need to discard the signals/request for doing something else when you are doing primary work (the work on which you want to focus). You can do it by saying it that you will do it later. If you realise you are doing something else other than the primary work, you can stop and tell yourself that it will be done later, and shift yourself to primary work. An example of this is when you are studying and a phone call comes. You can either continue with the study and tell yourself that phone call can be taken up later. Most of us will take the phone call and then forget what we were doing. Usually the moment you realize that study is your primary work, you can abort the call with reminder to take it later and move back to study. With practice, one can learn to divert the distractions and keep focus on the primary work (in this case study :-) ).

Effective way of discussion.

For quite sometime, during discussion with my students, I used to listen to them. When I am not clear, I used to ask questions about it. I was not comfortable with this method. Usually as the students are not experienced, and sometimes they are working on a problem, which I have not been involved deeply, it was difficult to comprehend what the student wanted to say. This usually will lead to situation, when  the comments and suggestions, new ideas will take more number of discussion meetings on same aspects. During discussions, taking one's own notes - scribblings, which indicates what is discussed, specific question, their relationship with each other, is useful. These notes allows oneself to get a snapshot of the whole discussion. One can de-focus from details and form a bigger picture, ask better questions. One can identify the missing links. Once these are easier to identify, it is simpler to decide on what should be done next. This allows the students to get much better feedback. So, the key is take your own notes and use them for quick recaps at various stages for an effective discussion. One can identify also the undefined stuff, missing links, vague arguments also in this fashion. These inputs once given back to students, can provide better guidance to the students' research.

Can we modify our habits and attitude?

One of the possible techniques of modifying the habits and attitude can be reminding oneself of the correct way of doing something, or not to do something. Every time you deviate from what should be done, you remind yourself of the correct way. This trains oneself and after a time, you tend to do what you were suggesting to your self. Although, it is possible, when you are doing it right, you do not remind yourself of the correct way. One day you may again endup doing it incorrectly. For important things, you can remind yourself everyday. This ensures that you will always do it correctly. For non-important thing, you will achieve a balance where you do it most of the time in right fashion and sometimes incorrectly and then you remind yourself.  For example, when you drive and you realize that you have not fastened the seat belt, you should remind yourself that one should fasten the seat belt before starting to drive. After sometime, you will come into habit of fastening the seat belt.Similary, if you remind yourself everyday, that you should not waste your time, you will end up following it. This reminder comes in category where you should provide suggestion to yourself regularly and not when you find that you are not doing it.

This technique of behavioral modification will not work, if you cannot observe that you are doing something in wrong way. In case, your friends or others tell you what is wrong in your actions, you can listen, decide on whether to take or discard the input, and then suggest yourself.

Finding truth using arguments

I have seen almost everyone arguing about one thing or other. People argue for various reasons. Most of the time, I have found, whether knowingly or unknowingly people argue to feel better, by winning the argument. I am somehow uncomfortable with this. Should we argue only for sake of winning an argument. During school days, we used to participate in debates. One used to get "for" or "against" a certain issue for proposing the arguments. Once, you have been given a "for", a thought somewhat gets implanted, that I need to justify and win this argument.

Arguments can also be seen as method to gain insight into different viewpoint and to build an evolving hypothesis to find truth. But in order to use arguments for this purpose, the persons involved or listening to the arguments, need to get detached from the arguments. They should be willing to adapt new arguments, relinquish older ones. When one listens to lot of arguments, there can be confusion. It is essential that argument worth looking into should be filtered. Usable arguments can be grouped in multiple clusters depending on the hypothesis they favour. Some arguments are isolated and if they are violating fundamental axioms, should be discarded. As the arguments evolve, usually few hypothesis will remain. By evolving the hypotheses, we can come closer to truth which we are seeking.

Management of tasks & distractions

Managing Tasks

Breaking into multiple attempts/sessions

One of the problems faced by persons involved in research is their usual involvement in mental tasks which require multiple sittings. For example, it is usually not possible to sit down and keep on thinking till you find a solution. Normally, you will get stuck mentally (mental block) or bored/tired. When attempted over multiple sittings, it becomes easier to incrementally make progress. During a sitting, when one is no more making progress, simply stop and switch to next task in the list.

Maintaining a list

We can maintain a list of tasks to avoid remembering them. One can do it using Google Keep (https://keep.google.com) or Google Tasks or any other method (like maintaining a list on the paper). One need to find a way to manage all the tasks mentioned in the list. The tasks can be thinking about something, physical activity, reading etc..

The objective should be to finish a task as soon as possible once it is taken up. Instead of leaving a task halfway, it is better not to take it up in the first place. Further, it is important to utilise your time efficiently so that maximum amount of work gets done.

Each task can be done till one feels bored or tired. Each such duration can be called slot. Most of the tasks will be done in multiple slots spread over multiple days. Slot end will depend on the cues as mentioned. Whenever a slot ends, next tasks from the list can be picked up based on your liking, and attempted. Everyday, we can begin with the task from the top. After doing top few tasks (say top two), we can switch to doing tasks in the list in any order based on what we like to do. Now, we can continue spending time on each new searched task as per our liking. If tasks are arranged in reducing priority, and our search for task starts from top, we can maintain the order of task taking care of importance and what we like to do. This way, when a task is picked up, we tend to choose important as well as the task which we will perform best at that time, first. A task gets removed only when it gets finished. As we are doing initially top few tasks (say top two), they will be progressed continuously on daily basis ensuring the continuity and surely will finish in shortest time.

In case something more important comes up, it can be added to the task list in the end, and the list can be reorganised by single bubble sort iteration towards top. Further, every evening, we can do a single iteration of arranging the task by moving most important task to top using bubble sort. So, most of the tasks will be done on daily basis for some time and it will allow good progress on them. Alternatively, one can partition the task lists in blocks from bottom to top keeping some overlap between consecutive blocks. In each block, we can identify most important task and move it at the top of block. This can be done from blocks from bottom to top. Finally, we can rearrange all the (top 10 or 15 tasks) in top most block in order of importance after bubble sorting from bottom to top of block.

Thus we retain the prioritized list of tasks, and also do it as per most important few (two) tasks as well as what we feel like to doing.

Sometimes, we are not doing an important task and doing something less important like checking emails, Whatsapp. Whenever you realise that you are doing something that is distraction, try to stop doing it. It is OK, even if you do not start the next listed task immediately. You should stop doing whatever you are doing unless it is the intended task for next 10-15 minutes. The chances are that work on intended task will start within this period. Once the intended task progresses, you can keep on working until you are tired/bored or feel to stop the task. If you cannot start the task in this attempt slot, then next important task can be taken up, by again defining next 10-15 minutes attempt slot. Controlling distraction will guide you to do the next best task. It is important to postpone distractions and add them to task list if they are important, to be done later. Once you have taken care of distractions and you are now back to the task to be done, simply ensure either you should do nothing or do the task in next 10-15 minutes slot. Slowly you will start doing the task. It is like letting the task begin at its own pace.

Managing Distractions

Once we are able to start a task, it is important we keep our focus on it till either we get tired or work gets finished. During a work, we need to avoid distraction. If you recall something to be done it should be postponed for later unless it is more important than what you are doing at that moment. One can simply note down that (obviously it must be less important than what you are doing) on a sheet of paper, and continue with what you are doing. Sometimes, you do'nt see the task moving further. In that case, let your mind do nothing except the task for next 10-15 minutes so that the task can start naturally.

Once you decide to move over to next task, the task noted on sheet can be seen and done if it is important. Normally, the task which you remember while working on something, may not be that important, but for fear of forgetting them, one tends to preempt the current task and move to it. Recording it on a sheet of paper, takes care of this fear, and thus one can do it later.

For focused work, bringing focus back to work, and avoiding the movement of focus on something else, both need to be suggested to self. One should suggest himself to immediately stop first and note the stopped task for later action, then go to mode where you do nothing except the task for next 10-15 minutes slot. This will let the task be happening at its natural speed.

The movement of focus on something else, is avoided by putting the distractions to paper for later handling. Also, never think of not doing the distracting work, but always think of it being postponed for later.

So, we should not discard the unproductive tasks but we should set the priorities right.

Another problem, one may find in bringing focus back to work, is the fear of getting too involved in the work and loosing on the other tasks. This fear does not allow one to start the work itself. I can call it the starting trouble. This is baseless fear, as normally we will get bored or tired after a certain time and then switch to something else. But if some task is addictive, then one can put the alarm for a certain duration say one hour, when you can switch to next best task from the list.

The above method works quite fine and does not require any mobile, clock etc. except to take care of the starting trouble and uses one's own mental and body signals for better work performance.

Sublists

We can also make multiple sublist and copy the tasks depending on grouping criteria to this sublist. Each sublist now can be assigned a one or two hour slots, when the task from these sublists are executed. Example of such sublists can be - personal research problems, papers to be read, books or papers to be written. We can also use daily single iteration of bubble sort in upward direction on these sublists also. As the tasks in sublist are also there in main list, these task will also be done in duration other than specified for sublist if they are on priority in main task list.

How research happens?

(This is something which is evolving. You may come periodically to check for updates. I may not be clear at many places. If you are reading, you are requested only to use it as inputs to your own thought and decision processes. Please do'nt believe on it blindly without making your own judgement.)

Fundamentally, research is nothing but asking questions about whatever you decide to research on, and finding out the answers. It is possible that one can do research about whatever problems one faces on daily basis, or about problems which have been documented by other researchers.

Most common practice followed by research students (pursuing PhD) is to study thoroughly the research papers published by other researchers. Usually this should be done with no faith in anyone. Once you doubt the authors, you study the papers critically. You may end up in many questions. It is good idea to write all of them down, prioritize them. Pick few of these questions. One possible strategy to pick up the problems is to guess the problems which can lead to easier publications as the count of publication is majorly used for evaluating the researcher. Though I personally feel this distorts the research directions.

Start spending time to observe/read/experiment on daily basis to gain insights leading to the answers to them. One need not study research papers for doing research, though it is good idea to be aware of what others are doing. This helps in avoiding mistake and sometime give correct directions to the pursuit of knowledge. In general, the research can be done by anyone after observing anything of his/her interest.

Whatever you observe, you can ask the following type of questions about it.

- What is it? (the characterization)
- Why is it (happening, existing)? (the reason)
- How is it (happening, formed) ? (the method)
- If you do (what ever you have as an idea?), what is going to happen? (the prediction)
- If you want something at the end of your pursuit, what should be done as next step? (the synthesis)

- One can also make "the comparison", which is derived after "the characterization" of individual components being compared.

Fundamentally, the research is done as iterative refinement of understanding.

Problem -> Observe what ever you can, related to the problem -> You make progress by either asking more questions, or deciding on where and what you must observe next.

This procedure keeps on happening repetitively, until you end up with a solvable sub-problem which need to be solved first or you are in a position to form a hypothesis (model) based on your observations. In the next step, you usually verify your hypothesis.

You also keep on solving the identified fundamental problems as separate research thread to identify and solve the sub-problems one after another. Once sufficient sub-problems are resolved, the solution to main problem will emerge.

What are the pre-requisite for doing research?

- One should not waste time. Observing or analysing the activities once every day is important to find how to modify the lifestyle, to devote maximum time to your research work. It is not only important to do the research work but also to do it as fast as possible.

- When you are not happy with the way your life is progressing, analysing (observing) and finding what methodical improvements are needed, should be done. Usually it is a good idea, to form a list of suggestions (rules) and keep on modifying them after each such instance of analysis.

- When doing a work - either thinking, or mentally revising something for identifying clues for forming hypothesis, identifying sub-problems, next observation space, a focus is needed. Distractions due to interruptions are not desirable. Typical distractions happen due to one of our five sensory organs (touch, smell, vision, sound, taste). Another way, major interrupts happen when we have urge to speak. Usually, when you are speaking you cannot do mental revision and observation session. So avoid speaking when doing your research work. Also, periodically asking about what you must have been doing at that moment will try to bring the focus back on what you are trying to do. Basically there is an anchor problem/thought/observation to which attention need to be brought back whenever distraction is realized.

Some more problems

Optical Switching

1. All-optical AGC techniques for gain control of EDFA in optical fiber loop buffer? (17.06.2006
2. All-optical optical threshold detector leading to switching on-off of an optical source? (19.06.2006)
3. Performance of fiber loop buffer memory with different varities of TWCs to determine the best performing TWC? (19.06.2006)
4. How the high bit rate (20, 40, 80, 160 Gbps) payload packets can be generated for transport in all-optical packet switched network? (23.07.2006)
5. How recirculating loop buffer can be used to store variable length packets? (23.07.2006)
6. All-optical packet switch architecture designs and their performance analysis when WDM is also used in links. So far the link (connected to input or output of switch) are assumed to have single wavelength transport.(23.07.2006)
7. Bistable optical elements can be used as memory elements. How to build the optical random access memory (RAM) using them? What will be criteria for judging their performance? What kind of performance can be achieved with them? How they will compare with fiber loop buffer memory? (24.07.2006)
8. How to estimate the control unit complexity for all-optical packet switch? To make the comparative study of all-optical packet switches on the basis of control unit complexity. (09.05.2007)

Software system management

1. Design issues in development of distributed repository system of software, description file archive, distributed event notification system and software deployment and update agent service. (23.07.2006)

Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Adhoc networks

1. How the addresses to be assigned to each node? The mechanism should use distributed algorithm. Each node should able to decide its own address based on some local information. If communication is needed before address is freezed, how it will be done?
2. 
   

Reliability in overlaid multicast networks

One of the issues in overlaid multicast networks is reliability of multicast communications. sudden tunnel failures, node failure, degradation of tunnel may lead to failure or degradation of the communications. In such scenarios, what signalling protocols can be implemented for reconfiguring the overlaid multicast topology for reliability. How the proposed algorithms will perform? We need to decide on the performance criterion also.