Viswanathan K's Thoughts

You can’t do physics without maths. It’s been that way since Newton. But has it gone too far, many have asked, to a point where physicists fall in love with “beautiful” mathematical theories and stop caring if it aligns with the real world? Phrases like “fairy tale physics”, “not even wrong”, and “lost in math” capture that sentiment.   Farmelo Graham’s book, The Universe Speaks in Numbers , traces the history of the relation between physics and maths. The story starts with Newton ’s theory of gravity – the equations matched observations, but, complained the critics (even back then), it didn’t describe the physical mechanism behind gravity. This was also a case of Continental envy – the British worshipped Newton, while the Continent felt he was a mathematician, not a physicist.   A generation later, the roles reversed. Frenchmen like Laplace advocated and advanced physics via maths, while the British dismissed such an approach as “flowery regions of algebra”. Not jus...

In his autobiography, Born a Crime , the comedian Trevor Noah talks about the names of black South Africans. Since the whites could not pronounce African names, the natives would have to (also) take on a name for whites to use, the so-called English name. This English name was chosen at random – “plucked from the Bible or taken from a Hollywood celebrity or a famous politician in the news”. Thus, names like Napoleon, Mussolini and even Hitler.   Such names offend whites, but Noah is unapologetic. The whites came, invaded, occupied, treated the natives like crap, did not educate them, and then act offended by the fact that the blacks don’t know history (of whites) and pick names like Mussolini and even Hitler. Whereas, as Noah says: “Many black people in South Africa don’t really know who Hitler was.” Noah’s own grandfather thought Hitler was a tank since all the news said it was crashing through Europe! Many South Africans considered Hitler good because he had white Europe...

Tim Harford wrote a thought-provoking article on the inflation numbers calculated by governments: “The consumer price index, or CPI, aims to measure the average price paid by UK consumers.”   The devil lies in the details. What basket of items you use for the calculation matters. Is it truly representative? But wait, here are further nuances: some items matter more to poor people than others (e.g. food prices).   And then there’s the problem that humans change their behavior. If the price of certain items goes up, they shift to cheaper alternatives. In which case, the increased price of the item doesn’t affect them anymore: “They might pick up some cheap carbohydrates. Rice one week, spaghetti the next — whatever was on special offer.” Even if you could magically factor in for such changing preferences, it’s not enough. After all: “It makes sense to calculate inflation by looking at the same goods, month after month.” But if you keep changing the list of ite...

While reading Freedom at Midnight decades back, I was too young and so taken in by the flow of the events and characters that one question never occurred. If all the princely states of British India had to make a choice (India or Pakistan?), how come Kashmir got to not make a choice at the time of independence? Surely, Sardar Patel and the British could have forced Kashmir to make a choice, the way they did with all the other princely states, right?   Shashi Tharoor answers that in An Era of Darkness . While highly critical of British rule, one area he acknowledges the positiveness of British rule was to introduce and allow for continuation of the printed news. While not fully free, they were still allowed to criticize the “policies and actions of the government in a responsible manner”. For the most part, that is (There were obviously times when the British would step in and censor or even ban entire outlets. And structurally, the British demanded a sizable “security deposi...

There is the company/site/app called FlightAware that provides real-time and historical flight tracking data (flight paths, statuses, cancellations, delays and predictive analytics). It is popular among both aviation enthusiasts and travellers.   Ben Burwell wrote this piece on the eternal problem engineers have to deal with: “While we as engineers might hope for aviation data to be clean and well-standardized, the real world is messy.” All kinds of assumptions about standardized data types and schemas (formats) turn out to be false, making the development of FlightAware very challenging. He lists examples of invalid assumptions from multiple categories, some unsurprising, some downright weird. Click on the hyperlinks below for examples.   Flights . Flights depart from a gate. Flights leave their gate only once. Flights take off and land at airports . Flights are never longer than a few days . Flight numbers consist of an airline’s code plus some numbers, like UA...

Ekta Kapoor once said: “I think success is what you make of it - of course there is always the factor of luck, but one should always be equipped to seize the moment when opportunity knocks.” That is obviously true. But can one do things to be better positioned to take advantage of the elusive opportunity/luck when it comes one’s way?   Shane Parrish certainly thinks so : “The answer is as simple as it is frustrating.” You’ll see what he means as he elaborates.   First, it is an accumulation of a large number of small steps that gets you to that stage where you could seize the opportunity. But none of those small steps carry immediate rewards (or penalties): “The ordinary choices that guarantee a strong future go unnoticed. There is no pat on the back for doing the right thing just as there is no slap on the wrist for doing the wrong thing. Eating a chocolate bar right now won’t make you unhealthy. Just as not eating it won’t make you healthy.” Not getting a...