Reflections on receiving tenure

“So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.”

Feynman as quoted here.

Here is Scott Aaronson at Schtetl optimized on his receiving tenure:

In seven years of teaching and blogging, I’ve learned something about my own psychology.  Namely, if I meet anyone—an undergrad, an anonymous blog commenter, anyone—who claims that the P vs. NP problem is beside the point, since it’s perfectly plausible that P=NP but the algorithm takes n¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ time—or that, while quantum mechanics works fine for small systems, there’s not the slightest reason to expect it to scale up to larger ones—or that the limits of computation are plainly no more relevant to fundamental physics than the fact that cucumbers are green—trying to reason with that person will always, till the end of my life, feel like the most pressing task in the world to me.  And it will make no difference whether I’m an unknown postdoc and the other person is Emperor of the Galaxy, or vice versa.

Why?  Because, I confess, a large part of me worries: what if this other person is right?  What if I really do have to jettison everything I thought I knew about physics, computation, and pretty much everything else since I was a teenager, toss all my results into the garbage can (or at least the “amusing recreations can”), and start over from kindergarten?  But then, as I fret about that possibility, counterarguments well up in my mind.  Like someone pinching himself to make sure he’s awake, I remember all the reasons why I was led to think what I think in the first place.  And I want the other person to go through that experience with me—the experience, if you like, of feeling the foundations of the universe smashed to pieces and then rebuilt, the infinite hierarchy of complexity classes collapsing and then springing back into place, decades’ worth of books set ablaze and then rewritten on blank pages.  I want to say: at least come stand here with me—in this place that I spent twenty years of late nights, false starts, and discarded preconceptions getting to—and tell me if you still don’t see what I see.

That’s how I am; I doubt I can change it any more than I can change my blood type.  So I feel profoundly grateful to have been born into a world where I can make a comfortable living just by being this strange, thin-skinned creature that I am—a world where there are countless others who do see what I see, indeed see it a thousand times more clearly in many cases, but who still appreciate what little I can do to explore this corner or that, or to describe the view to others.  I’d say I’m grateful to “fate,” but really I’m grateful to my friends and family, my students and teachers, my colleagues at MIT and around the world, and the readers of Shtetl-Optimized—yes, even John Sidles.  “Fate” either doesn’t exist or doesn’t need my gratitude if it does.

Take a look!

Trello

Just heard about Trello from Joel and signed up! Looks promising; may be I can use it to manage things around in the lab and office! Let us see.

A scientist and a story teller

Appreciating Oliver Sacks.

Some communication tips

There are two interesting posts from Kerin at Savage Minds. One is about signposting (for and against). The other is about becoming an expert in an area in a short time. Kerim has several interesting tips and pointers. There is one that I usually give my seminar students which is missing in Kerim’s list — I am not even sure that it is relevant for what he is talking about. In any case, for what it is worth, here it is. Find a paper  – any paper, in the topic in which you are interested in. Backtrack and front-track references: that is go through all the references in the paper as well as go through all references in the papers that refer to this paper. And keep back and front-tracking from those papers. Within three steps or so, one finds that there are a few papers that everybody refers to in the field. Those are the classics in the field which the seminar student should read first. And then, there are some which are widely referred to. Those are the ones which the student should read next and so on. This method is the easiest one to identify important papers in any area.

Police and politics

‘Police business,’ he said almost gently, ‘is a hell of  a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get …

That is from Raymond Chandler’s The lady in the lake. An enjoyable read if you are into mysteries.

Curious pursuits of Margaret Atwood

I am a fan of Margaret Atwood. Her Blind Assassin is the book that I first read and especially enjoyed the lyrical prose. The next book that I enjoyed is her Negotiating with the dead which talks about the writing process. I just finished reading her Curious pursuits: Occasional writing. As with Negotiating with the dead, many pieces in the book are about writing. There are also a few obituaries, several autobiographical essays, and even one or two movie reviews.

One measure of success of such books about books, for me at least, is the number of books that I go looking for after the reading. In this case, here is a partial list of books and authors that I now want to read thanks to Atwood’s recommendations: Anne Sexton: a self-portrait in letters, Northrop Fyre, Jonh Updike’s The witches of Eastwick, Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the bush, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ernest Buckler, Antonia Fraser’s The Warrior queens, Thomas King (One good story, That one), Marquez (The general in his labyrinth), Anne of Green Gables, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Grimm (unpurged), Hillary Mantel (An experiment in love), She (Haggard), Doctor Glas, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard (Tishomingo Blues), Ursula Le Guin, Tuds Terkel (Hope dies last), Robert Bringhurst (The classical Haida mythtellers), Orhan Pamuk (Snow), The island of Doctor Moreau, and George Orwell. Thus, the book is quite a hit for me.

Atwood has thought deeply about certain things: writing process, science fiction, Canadian literature. The writing conveys these thoughts; and, conveys them in style. Atwood’s writing style is something that I enjoy (and would love to emulate). There are also  a few laugh-out-loud funny passages and several humorous pieces. In addition, there are a few personal pieces which I liked a lot: for example, her difficulties in reading Virginia Woolf when she first encountered Woolf is something that I have also experienced.

Needless to say, strongly recommended!

Approaches: to equations and doing science

Here is a post (via John Baez’s Google+ share) that describes the three approaches to equations: what the post calls theoretical and formula based can also be called as  analysis and seeking analytical solution respectively. There are, in a similar manner, three approaches to doing science itself: theoretical, experimental and computational. The best approach, be it equations or science, is, of course, to combine all the three (in proportions according to taste).

 

A computational person’s nightmare

Anybody who writes code for her research knows about the scary feeling of a bug being there in the code; may be the exciting new results are all but an artifact of the code; and, what is worse, may be the bug in the code is a silly, elementary mistake.

Of course, I have had my share of such nightmares too — not just the feeling, but at least twice, did notice mistakes themselves. But, fortunately for me, (a) I noticed them myself; and, (b) the mistakes were minor.

All this has taught me that while it is almost impossible to avoid bugs in codes, there are several ways in which one can pick them up: (i) Have some sharp eyed colleagues go over your results (and, if you are as lucky as me, they might even be willing to go over your code) and spot any unphysical results; (ii) Explain you code to a human; this is almost a fail-safe way of spotting mistakes; I think in the coding community this is closer to the pair-programming concept; (iii) Keep benchmarking your code and keep coming up with newer and newer tests; while bechmarking, I have also found that it is important that you match numbers within the accuracy of your calculations; numbers not matching at the fourth or fifth decimal place, sometimes have led me to identify the bugs in the code. (iv) Make your code open source and share with as many users as possible. Even if a few of those users turn out to be developers, they will notice errors, if any. (v) If possible, find another colleague who will implement the same code, and results matching from two people increases the confidence in the code enormously; as my advisor used to say the probability of two people making the same error goes down multiplicatively.

All the above thoughts are triggered by this link list from Abi, and especially this report.

Of course, if you are any lucky, you will also get to experience, once in a while, the following feeling during your research career:

“I almost didn’t believe my eyes when I saw just the basic spreadsheet error,” said Herndon, 28. “I was like, am I just looking at this wrong? There has to be some other explanation. So I asked my girlfriend, ‘Am I seeing this wrong?’”

I will save my thoughts on this for another post (and also my thoughts on the ease with which you can mess up things while using excel: I remember the terrible mess I made while grading for the first time for a large class using excel spreadsheet). In the meanwhile, I recommend that you follow all the links in Abi’s post.

 

Jonathan Coe’s What a carve up!

A very satisfying read; strongly recommended.  Here is the complete review page for the novel.

R C Dhere’s Shri Vittal: a great convergence

For the past one week, I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying Annd Feldbaus’ translation of R C Dhere’s Shri VIttal: Ek Mahasamanvay called The rise of a folk god: Vittal of Pandharpur.

The book has set me thinking about the deity called “Betaraya” (The hunter king) who is worshiped as Veknateshwara in parts of Krishnagiri district and the similarity of this deity and his stories to that of Vittal. There are also several references to  pastoralist siddhas which reminded me of the stories of Thirumular and Idaikkadar.

Having known about the haridasa view of Vittala, knowing about the Varkari version as well as knowing about the other influences (Veera Saiva, Buddhist and Jain) was truly wonderful. I especially liked the section about the violent reaction against claims of Vittal as a Jain god and but acceptance of Vittal as Buddha and I found that the reasons that Prof. Dhere gives for the reaction are quite convincing. A similar explanation was given by Sri Chandrasekhara Saraswati of Kanchi regarding Amarasimha’s impartiality in his Amarakohsa when it came to describing the names of Hindu deities and his appropriating the names of Jeena to Buddha.

Finally, all these days, I was wondering as to why Haridasa’s blurred the distinction between Buddha and Jeena by describing Buddha as standing naked. After reading the book, I can see why.

On the whole, a nice book for anybody interested in  religious studies. Strongly recommended.