Alright, alright, I do not intend to make it sound like a retarded student trying to make a mockery out of the syllabi or the curriculum, but there are things which I have no comprehension of. When I was a kid, I always attempted to reason out the blue sky, or the blue sea, and wow, Physics and Geography helped me understand it so effortlessly. It told us also why the Sun is so bright and how the Earth is a sphere and not a square, as previously believed. It even helped me figure out some interesting and exciting phenomena like the auroras at the North Pole and the air routes taken by the passenger aircrafts. I am not singing praises of what these branches of study has blessed us with, but is it not worth appreciating the vastness and implications that they have on our daily life and beyond?
There are subjects, of course, which are mere reminders of what some great and not so great men of yesterday did to yield the today that we live in. It is only worth knowing it, that we often say, “History repeats itself”. I still wonder why we say that, or what makes us say so…why? Is it really so that History repeats itself, if so, then, have we witnessed anyone like Hitler ever before or after? Or is it that the human race is a tad too sensitive and tries to draw points of similarity with such evil minds upon the sight of anyone having points of semblances? Is the human race so fragile and petrified that it is shaken by out-of-the-way thinking of any new mind? What Hitler did was something amazing, I am no big fan of brutal wanton killing, and I do not endorse any of his views on any religion, caste or creed, but if you reflect upon the impact, rather positive impact that he had on the German psyche is nothing short of phenomenal. A country that was down and buried, thanks to the heavy fines levied upon it by the Treaty Of Versailles, could have only hoped for someone as charismatic as Hitler to lift her to the heights that she eventually did at that time. I mean, look at the German cars. Whoa! The very recent Volkswagen Polo, launched in India
Apart from this question that has been bugging me- why history repeats itself, rather why we say it so often, one more perturbs me a lot. Why do we have to study to earn? Do we not earn to feed ourselves? Why do we have to study to feed ourselves? Are not the farmers uneducated but still they feed themselves well enough, or may be not, may be Indian farmers resort to suicides and abandoning their farmland in quest for a better life, whereas, in some nations like Canada, farmers have their private helicopter to spread the seeds. And we do know that Canada India
Coming back to the discussion of subjects that we, the human kind, have developed and so far encountered, Mathematics has fascinated many a man. It has definitely excited me when I am drowsy, no pun intended people! But, yes, I was pretty good at it during my childhood, but I lost my way somewhere, and when it hit me again, I thought to myself whether or not will I be able to cope with it, whether or not I will be able to strike the right chords whilst solving its problems. I was in my 10th standard that I was staring at heavy insult and disgrace in my would-be Boards exam results. I was comfortable enough with the Geometry part, but the arithmetic ate my head away! I gave in my best and I did exceedingly well, according to my then standards of course. Then I was up against the agony of Calculus and after a lot of positive-struggle, I attained significantly respectable marks, if not surprising.
Statistics, a subject which is a branch of Mathematics, is yet another fascinating subject worth mentioning. It was at an exciting crossroads of my life that I encountered this subject. Although, I had my share of acquaintances with it, during my 10th and 12th exams, it was very little, if not misleading, exposure. Oh come on, any one who hasn’t had done his Bachelors or isn’t working in an analytics firm, would only know it as a subject wherein we apply formulae to get straight forward answers… oh well, that is what I thought at the ‘crossroads’ that I mentioned earlier! It was very challenging for me to do even something as simple as putting values into a formula to get answers, because I have always been a person of great impatience and negligent speed, I always used to miss a digit or two, or miss an addition or multiplication or both for sure. It was a different experience, for somebody as callous as me, to do anything patiently and carefully, step by step, blocking away all distractions as hard as I could. It was a revelation to me, that I could really do it correctly, and since then I have had, or momentarily, had a liking for the subject. It was all about proving a point to me; it was then, that I really understood what Pete Sampras had to say on his decision of retirement from the world of Tennis, “I don’t have anything to prove to myself”. But I had lots to prove. No, it wasn’t a case of rush of blood where the adrenalin gets pumped into my veins, it could not be the case. I had had learnt that I am not good at handling the energy bursts that it blesses me with, so I make efforts to berid it all. At the crossroads, it was a difficult choice to make, may be I didn’t do that right, or may be I did. I was to discover soon.
The very begin, I was hit by a tornado named probability, it was tough handling it, but I cherished the other subject, which I always want to, the one which had formulae and I loved waking myself up for it. It is really true that it is a different experience to do things which one really like to do, not many are lucky to do so, and if u r lucky, u really are lucky. It did not take very long for me realize that statistics was nothing like what I had perceived it to be. Some good friend of mine had told me that some good gambler hit the jackpot at a Las Vegas Casino using hi-fi statistical theory, I was like huh! I rarely believe that subjects alone, as theory, can make a difference. Any theory when applied needs a bit of tinkering, in theory we can so easily predict the position of the atoms using the formulae laid before us, but it is virtually not possible to do it, or even, light ray, which is said to be the perfect ray, is not perfect although it as close to being as mass-less as possible, I may stand corrected, as my knowledge is limited. It was bewildering for me to learn that the probability for anything to happen exists, but there is no certainty. There is, however, a certainty, death. It hit me and a few of my thinking-friends then that there is something that has certainty, although this was told to us by a professor who has a subtle sense of humour, so the interpretations may vary. May be he simply joked.
As the course moved on, my realisation of the true face of the Statistics and its seamless application surely mesmerized, but the more I learnt about it, the more I despised it bit by bit. It was once in my penultimate year at college that one of the professors asked us to speak a few words on the state of Statistics in out beloved country, I had to. I spoke my mind out, I told them that the 1st impressions, in most cases, is the last impression, and that of statistics is not all that good, it is a small part of the syllabi in our Boards and not much light is thrown in terms what possibilities it entails. Well, that is the case with many other subjects too, but at least one would know, that if he studies English as his subject of further studies, he would end up being a lecturer or if luckier, an editor in one of the dailies, but that is not the case with statistics, and am sure not many know that statistics is as vast as small it looks.
Applications range from business to administration, agriculture to medicine. It is very fascinating to read the story of how data points transcends itself into meaningful insights of valuable purpose, pas a pas, from numbers to matter of significant importance. Although just to throw caution to the wind, its all about the probabilistic value, and nothing is for certain, so before u look into the trends of stock market and invest heavily based on statistical inferences, just beware. Now that is where it is all in a mess. I mean work all that hard, break your head, spend hours and hours, and sweat it out, all u get is only a probabilistic value…its like you scream out loud and there’s nobody to hear you!
All this being said, I do like statistics when I keep telling myself that it is possible, as in, at least it instills in us some hope…because according to it, everything has a probability, so anything is possible…is it not? Now before people start accusing me of ‘Statistical Abuse’, I really like it when it says that India being the most powerful has some chances, when it says that India could win the Cricket World Cup, when it says that world could be a better place to live in.
Measure is yet another mysterious branch in statistics itself, am still juvenile to its exposure, I am sure it is just as enthralling as the other branches of statistics. But, you know, sometimes a few things would make you wonder about its source of existence or rather the purpose of existence, as if they are created by works of wonder, I meant the real wonder, as if thinkers just got some random ideas and worked their asses off to prove what they thought and were so consumed by their egos that they really had to prove themselves correct, and make a point. Sometimes, I wonder, if it is the ego which fuels all our achievement, day in and day out. I mean, what could really compel, thinkers to prove what they think, to be correct for others to follow it. Why should we follow those ideas at all? Should we not develop our own ideas, totally free of preconceived notions and belief, even if it is senseless, considering what they did made a lot of sense, why should we narrow down our field of vision, why should we restrict our thought process, why should we at all think based on what they thought, if not then, we are only stabbing the future. That is what measure means to me now. And to make it more exciting, add the menace of probability-Measure and Probability Theory. That’s the subject in the syllabi, which I consider to be utterly baseless. Like one of the good souls, rightly protested the existence of this paper, by good examples, my heart goes out to his hard fought battle, but to some avail of course. Still, things are no better. My seniors find its applications nowhere yet, and my counterparts would opt to remain tongue tied, as they rightfully find no point otherwise, but even I don’t, I speak out and am happier doing so.
As my fate would have it, my run of disgust with it yielded poor result at examinations which has had only furthered my degree of despise that I have for it… I still do not get it. But I am not going to let it go so fast….let me be embellished in the name of the some one who really despised it for its existence. I will give my best and even sacrifice my pride and honour that would shout out aloud about the apathy that the governing body bestows upon us. This will be my protest against such ridiculous ideas of imparting knowledge that was a creation of someone who is now lost in oblivion and perhaps they themselves were when they thought of all this. Let this be my Tribute to MPT.
