Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In my last blog , I asked if we should look East, i.e., at how China, Japan and South Korea are dealing with coronavirus. Since those countries got hit first (whereas Europe and the US got hit later), there’s data for a far longer period from the 3 Asian countries compared to the West. To adjust for that, I’ve taken the total cases count for the first 43 days in each country (that corresponds to present day for most of the West). First up, China and South Korea: Don’t worry about the exact numbers. Look only at the shape of the curve for both countries: a slow rise (few new cases per day), that changes to a steep rise (lots of new cases per day), and by Day 25 or so, both countries managed to flatten the curve (back to few new cases per day). In other words, Day 25 corresponds to the time when the effects of their lockdowns began to show up. Next, look at Europe and the US for the same period (first 43 days): The curve starts picking up much later (there’s the ges...

As India nears the completion of Week 1 of a nationwide Coronavirus lockdown, in places like Bangalore, one can see folks cite what other countries are doing and suggesting we do the same in our apartment complexes. Are they justified? Or over-reacting? Are the countries being compared, well, comparable? First, let me call out my source for the analysis below. It’s this site that captures Coronavirus stats from all countries . It captures infection counts, recoveries, deaths and active cases on a daily basis and also plots graphs of the same over the last few weeks and months . On some topics, I do see patterns across countries. On others, hardly. And in yet others, patterns seem limited to race (Asians, Europeans etc), or to population size, or to climate. But the key is that one can’t be sure and no pattern is universal… yet I find most people talk as if there is certainty on all such matters. Take China and South Korea : only 4.2% and 2.9% of infected cases have res...

In the competition , the randomly enrolled, volunteer forecasters crushed the other groups. Year after year. So what made for good forecasters? In his terrific book, Superforecasting , Philip Tetlock says there are many aspects to being a great forecaster. For one, good forecasters don’t subscribe to one Big Idea. Rather, they hold multiple perspectives and don’t get carried away by ideological beliefs. “There is no divinely mandated link between morality and competence.” They also do not believe anything is destined to happen. As Daniel Kahneman famously said, there was a 50% chance that each of Stalin and Hitler could have been born as girls, not boys. It was only a 25% chance that both were boys. And who can really say that history wouldn’t have been very different then? Who’s to say that the Soviet Union would have imploded peacefully even without a Gorbachev at the helm? The best forecasters can break down seemingly impossible questions (“Will they find plutonium ...

When we think of forecasters, sadly, we rarely know anyone beyond TV. And as Philip Tetlock writes in his terrific book, Superforecasting : “The one undeniable talent that talking heads have is their skill at telling a compelling story with conviction…” The aim doesn’t seem to be accuracy; rather, it’s just entertainment… and certainty. Given that all forecasting can only be probabilistic, the recipient of the forecast needs to be open to uncertainty. Not an easy thing, since not everyone can adopt the Richard Feynman attitude: “Doubt is not a fearful thing, but a thing of very great value.” This opens a new question: if a weather forecaster says 70% chance of rain and it didn’t rain, was he wrong? Or was he right since he also meant 30% chance of no rain? Then again, does this just make his prediction right, rain or no rain? Tetlock and team came up with a system to answer exactly such questions to evaluate the accuracy of forecasters. First, forecasts must have cle...

Thanks to the Coronavirus, the lockdown has been enforced in Bangalore. So one has to work from home. Those with working spouses suddenly discover that the Wi-Fi bandwidth isn’t enough for two people working from home. Then there’s the issue of sharing bandwidth with the on-vacation kid(s) who want to watch Netflix and YouTube. The EU’s answer to this problem? Since you can’t control the kids + retired, you cut off the source instead: “The EU has called on streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube to limit their services in order to prevent the continent’s broadband networks from crashing as tens of millions of people start working from home.” Thank God the Indian government hasn’t take such crazy measures. Non-working spouses resent the work-from-home spouse who takes over a room and insists on pin drop silence (“Hey, I’m working”) and demands endless cups of tea, snacks and meals…. to be served in “his” room. In our apartment complex, we have slinging matches th...

China and Italy. Opposite sides to the handling of the Coronavirus. The former appears to be the role-model-if-not-for-this-annoying-thing-called-freedom, while the latter is the origin of the meme “Let’s not be Italy”. Then there’s the UK, writes Santosh Desai. Crudely put, their approach sounds like this: Few people will die. The rest will recover. Just let it play out without any extreme measures. That sounds heartless, so what’s the though process? “The logic employed is that in any case, in will be impossible to prevent this from happening regardless of what actions are taken today. Strict lockdowns might work temporarily but as soon as these are relaxed, the coronavirus is likely to make a strong comeback, the argument goes. Once a majority of the population gets infected and thus becomes immune to the disease, then the virus loses its contagiousness and could get permanently controlled.” Or is the UK approach about sheer pragmatism, writes Tyler Cowen: “For how ...

Passive learning is what most of us grew up with. Usually, it meant the teacher spoke, we listened and took notes. And every once in a while, as Alex Tabarrok writes , we were “entertained by a great lecturer who makes everything seem simple”. Unfortunately, it’s also the mode of learning where we don’t learn much or well. The alternative form, active learning, is interactive and yes, hard. And while students learn more via this technique, unfortunately it also turns out that: “(Students) dislike this style of class and think they learn less. It’s no big surprise–active learning is hard and makes the students feel stupid.” Which is why, as per one study , it would help if teachers keep repeating the following point when they follow active learning: “The success of active learning will be greatly enhanced if students accept that it leads to deeper learning—and acknowledge that it may sometimes feel like exactly the opposite is true.” You’d think this difference in how e...

When I thought of calculus, I used to think of maths. And physics. And engineering. Which is why I found these lines in Steven Strogatz’s Infinite Powers very, very   surprising: “Consider the surprising role that differentials (calculus) played in the understanding and treatment of HIV.” Back then, it was known that HIV went through 3 stages: 1)       In the first stage, an infected person has flu-like symptoms; 2)      Next, a 10-year period of no symptoms; 3)      And finally, AIDS sets in, weakening the immune system to a point where other infections overwhelm the system and kill the patient. Tests had shown that the number of virus particles in the bloodstream was high in the first stage (hence the symptoms); was low but not gone altogether (the “set point”) in the second stage; and was overwhelming in the last stage. With no cure in sight, all kinds of ideas were tried. One such team was of...

I was intrigued by the title of Shivam Shankar Singh’s book: How to Win an Indian Election . The book did not disappoint. The author says he was drawn into politics for the same reason so many other educated folks chipped in around the same time: massive corruption under UPA II, the Anna Hazare led protests, and the gruesome rape of Nirbhaya: “It was against this backdrop… (arose) two charismatic leaders… Arvind Kejriwal… (and) Narendra Modi.” Singh is a political consultant, similar to the far, far more famous Prashant Kishor. Their campaign style works only if a party identifies one man clearly for CM or PM. And that style revolves around the branding of the Chosen One. Did you think only the BJP plays the branding game? Singh points out it is done well by all parties. Take Punjab. The Congress candidate for CM, was rebranded from aristocratic “Maharaj” Amarinder Singh to “Captain” Amarinder Singh, the ex-army man who would pull Punjab out of the abyss. Or look at Bihar. M...

Every generation feels the next generation is too soft, too over-protected. Now add a new term to that list: “coddled”, from Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind . I wasn’t sure if the book was too US-specific, so I heard his podcast with Shane Parrish instead. In the US, Haidt believes the coddling started at least a generation back, as the instances of child kidnapping and molestation increased. Kids who used to go to play on their own at 6 were now allowed to do that only at 14. Plus, in the US suburbs, kids have to be ferried to play areas. That in turn meant play was rarely unsupervised. Kids no longer got to evolve and come up with the rules of engagement on their own, instead adults told them the sanitized rules. After kids became “economically worthless but emotionally priceless”, they have increasingly become “academic projects”, says Haidt. And that in turn means parents deprive kids of the very childhood experiences they need most and replac...

Like any other country, India has a huge number of laws. And as all of us know, most of them never get enforced. Others get enforced only once in a while. We tend to blame that on laziness, mindset and corruption. Alex Tabarrok and Shruti Rajagopalan argue the reason could be different. They point out that “India has essentially all the inspections, regulations, and laws a developed country such as the United States has”, but the government hasn’t anywhere near the money needed to enforce the laws! They call this the problem of “premature imitation”: copying laws from developed countries without the money to enforce them. The authors wonder if having fewer laws would result in better enforcement and adherence levels: “Some programs and policies are of great value, but others should be undertaken only when state capacity and GDP per capita are higher.” And if one thinks from that perspective, I am sure it won’t be hard to find all kinds of laws from British era that s...

Shivam Shankar Singh’s book, How to Win an Indian Election , looks at attempts to change the political system. He cites the experience of Irom Sharmila, the human rights activist from Manipur who had fasted for 16 years against army atrocities: “Seeing that her fast had failed to achieve anything other than international awards and media coverage, she decided to… contest the state elections.” She got just 90 votes. Yes, just 90. Not a typo: “It was disheartening to realize that people who had dedicated their lives to serving others did not even get votes from the people whom they directly helped.” Ouch! Perhaps it was Sharmila’s political inexperience that was the problem? Singh next looks at Prodyut Bora from Assam. He was a part of the BJP, but quit it to form a new party, LDP. He had been on the inside of how elections work, and tried to factor for it. How did he fare? The lack of money led to a crushing defeat: “(It) was a case study in why new idealistic parties d...

How does a plane fly? I thought I knew, so it was very embarrassing when this TechStuff podcast on that very question started by saying they’d first describe the wrong answer to the question: The shape of the wing causes the wind above the wing to have to travel a longer distance than the wind flowing below the wing. Ergo, the wind above has to flow faster than the wind below. By Bernoulli’s principle, if the wind velocity is higher above the wing, the pressure must be lower above the wing. In turn, the higher pressure below the wing would produce a lift force, thereby offsetting the downward pull of good old gravity. All very logical, right? Which is why it is taught world-over. It is also what I believed. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong answer! The podcast deconstructs why it is the wrong answer, not by physics but by simple logical thinking: If the shape of the wing is the key, why does a paper plane fly? If the shape of the wing is the key, how ...