Sunday, May 14, 2006

The Axe effect should really be called the AND effect ...


And, AND is a chemical called androstadienone, which "is 10 times more abundant in male than female sweat and is suspected of acting as a male pheromone."

In the study, three groups of 12 volunteers, including lesbians, heterosexual women and straight men, were asked to sniff a variety of odours. They included odourless air, four common scents and [the chemical AND] ...

After smelling the odours, the volunteers were given brain scans that revealed which regions of their brains had the greatest increase in blood flow, a measure of how much they had been stimulated. The scans showed that after sniffing AND, a region of the brain called the anterior hypothalamus lit up in heterosexual women and gay men.

The brain scans of lesbian women and straight men showed a marked difference after sniffing the male sweat chemical, however. Brain scans revealed activity increasing in parts of the brain called the piriform cortex and amygdala, which are believed to light up when the brain processes any odour.

The corresponding chemical in women is called EST. All of this and more from this Guardian piece.

* * *

Update: Talking of the Axe effect, check out some of the print ads so lovingly compiled by Myndfcukd.

Update 2: Today's (16 May) NYTimes too has covered this story.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Recipe for the 'anti-quota' soup


Thanks to Atanu Dey, we now have the recipe for that perfect anti-quota soup many of you have been waiting for. [Note: All the bold emphasis in the quotes, below, is from me; none of it is in the original.]

1. Take 7 standard measures of open display of intellectual heavy artillery [some of it fortified by a hectoring tone, and gratuitous mini-lessons in 'economic thinking'].

  • In a free market, price ... rises sufficiently to equate the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied. There are no shortages. Thus, for instance, there is no 'shortage' of diamonds or of Microsoft shares ...
  • Rent seeking behavior ... is not motivated by ignorance; it is motivated by greed and is informed by knowledge of how the system works.
  • If the gainers gain more than the losers lose, then it is theoretically possible for the gainers to compensate the losers for their loss ... Such a policy effects what is a called a 'Pareto improvement' ...
  • ... (after all, we are all Bayesians)...
  • ... before one can propose a solution, one should understand the problem.
  • ... distinguish between the causes and symptoms (or consequences), and address the causes, not the symptoms if you want to solve the problem.
  • ... understand the distinction between the equality of opportunity and the equality of outcome ...

2. Mix it well with 4 standard measures of intimidation or bullying.

  • ... it should come as no surprise that yet another idiotic scheme is hatched by the party in power ...
  • Persistent and widespread poverty is a consequence of asinine policy choices, just as much as prosperity is a consequence of wise policy choices.
  • Since the mindset which in the past consistently evolved and doggedly pursued illogical policies has not changed, ... any proposed new policy is also going to be flawed.
  • [...] This should be evident to the meanest intelligence, it would appear, but then perhaps our policy makers don't make even the meanest intelligence grade.

3. Boil the mixture for five minutes on low flame. Before taking it off the stove, add two pinches of questionable assumptions.

  • Unqualified candidates who enter the system are by definition unable to benefit from the opportunity to the extent that a qualified candidate would have done.
  • It is undeniable that certain segments of the population are ill prepared to compete for seats in higher education.

4. Garnish with some 'just-so' model of economic efficiency [1].

Assume that the full cost of, say, a 4-year IIT education is $50,000 (or about Rs 22 lakhs). Further, assume that a quota student ends up benefiting less than the full cost, say, $10,000, while a non-quota student gets at least $50,000 of benefits. The net loss is then at least $40,000. Instead of wasting $40,000 on one backward class student at the IIT ...

5 A drop or two of irony will be an added plus.

... why quotas ... [are a] morally repugnant policy. It penalizes certain people based on their group membership.

Indian educational system [is] a structure created by the incompetent and uneducated to produce more of the same sort of people.

Et, voila! You now have Atanu Dey's Original Anti-Quota Soup. It is guaranteed to taste even better when you keep chanting mantras such as "address the cause, not the effect", or "equality of opportunity, not outcome". Atanu has also planned a multi-course meal, so get ready for a quota-free Nirvana feast.

* * *

Atanu makes some points that I actually agree with. He argues, quite rightly, for expanding the supply of higher education with the help of private sector [though I don't share his enthusiasm for for-profit universities] and improving primary and secondary education. These are unexceptionable goals; what I fail to see is how pursuing these goals come in the way of using a policy of reservation (or, affirmative action) to help bring disadvantaged groups into the mainstream.

* * *

[1] Have you tried your hand at creating one of those toy models that are, ummm, 'just so'? I have. Here. It's a lot of fun! And, it is so satisfying too. You know why? My model 'proves' that quotas are economically efficient. As I said: 'Just So!'

Thursday, May 11, 2006

A critique of plagiarism ...


... except that this critique (in the New York magazine, by David Edelstein) itself is plagiarized from many sources. Intentionally.

As New York's spokeperson put it, "The first and last lines are the only original things in the entire piece." Here is the last paragraph:

In this world of Google and Nexis, in which you can pick and choose among so many words written on a given subject, you can’t be sure that anything you read is original. Even this.

* * *

Thanks to Krish for the pointer.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Why are Satyam's HR practices stuck in the 19th century?


This report in the Business Line from about a month ago [via Emma] starts innocently enough:

The good news on the gender front is that companies like Satyam Computer are actively seeking to recruit women at senior or leadership levels.

For a company that's "actively seeking to recruit women", it's really odd to find its HR Director, Mr. A. S. Murthy, holding -- and expressing -- some horribly stereotyped views about women. Just look at what he says about single women:

... [The] examples of many single women at the top is not a proud example I want to quote. Their anxiety, attitude, communication methods, etc, cause concern. Especially in divorced women, we commonly find problems and my experience is not positive. Some of these women are difficult to fit into teams; they can make both insensitive bosses as well as subordinates." ...

The last paragraph is revealing, too:

"[When] we look at the attrition figures, we're asking if we train women for 6-24 months, what is the use if they leave?" The average tenure of women is 2 years; with that of men being slightly higher, he adds.

Let's get this straight: the question "what is the use if they leave?" is asked only about women, but not about men, whose average tenure is "slightly higher". The man's bias is revealing, no? Is this bias shared by Satyam's top management?

Anthropologists among shoppers


To analyze shoppers buying batteries, for example, [Jennifer Argo] asked her mystery shoppers to stand at a rack looking at camera film located near a rack of batteries. There was no interaction between the battery shoppers and the film browsers. Argo wanted to know if the mere presence of another shopper affected a buyer's choice. It did.

When anyone was standing beside the battery shoppers, most would buy the most expensive brand. If no one was there, they'd buy a cheaper brand; if there was a crowd of three or more, they would always buy the expensive brand. [...]

"It's impression management — people don't want to look cheap," she says. "We will spend more money to maintain our self-image in front of others."

From this story by Leslie Scrivener in Toronto Star. It's not just the anthropologists who are on the prowl and on the superstores' payroll; there's a whole army of them: psychologists (evolutionary and other types), sociologists, ethnographers, (consumer)behaviorall scientists, and -- this is going to make Charu shudder -- neuroscientists doing brain scans on consumers.

All for what? To find better ways of making you buy, and buy more -- shop until you drop.

In the Star article, I found something that sounds, well, hokey:

"The brain designed for hunting and gathering on the savannah is being used to define the way we work, our leisure, our relationship to others and our shopping," [Charles Dennis] says.

"Gathering is like comparison shopping. That's the way women tend to shop, taking it very seriously."

* * *

One of the best articles on the science of shopping (from 1996, well before brain scans were used for this purpose) is this New Yorker piece by Malcolm Gladwell [via Ramnath].

A gossip blog on India's TV news channels


It's called The War for News [via Neha's blog at its spiffy new site].

First impression: it's run by someone who calls himself/herself 'the all seeing spy', and not surprisingly, it has a gossipy, bitchy tone. Also, it allows anonymous commenters to talk about who is doing whom. So, if you are into that kind of stuff , it's worth visiting every once in a while.

To its credit, TWFN doesn't shy away from naming names! For example, the one that got me to look at it is this story (which names a name) about the aftermath of its earlier 'newsflash' on sexual harassment at an IBN party (which doesn't, identifying the alleged culprit as "IBN's prolific crime reporter").

Here's a short snippet from this post:

There are already hundreds, thousands out there who want to know about the lives of journalists. Not because it's sadistic, but because everyone loves how journalists talk down and then get away with murder. This is, at one level, a dirty, jealous, cheap and regressive industry, and as it gets more technical, younger and less patient, it also gets more angry, less reasonable, more nasty. The world is on the outside, and it's looking in.

Oh, I almost forgot. TWFN also has a detailed commentary about how the Indian news channels handled the Kaavya Viswanathan story.

IITs recruiting European faculty ?


Update: There is a slightly better report (with some additional details) in the Indian Express; the positions don't look like they are permanent. And, the numbers are quite small. IIT-K director says the institute is considering some five potential candidates from EU.

Hmmm... This is interesting:

"We have already short-listed at least five teachers and discussions are on with the heads of different departments to recruit them on a permanent basis," said Dhande, while talking to TOI on Tuesday. He said that besides permanent recruitment, a few senior experts would be invited on contract basis to teach at the IITs.

And this paragraph is even more interesting:

The package offered by IITs was comparable to the remunerat ion paid by the European institutions in terms of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity).

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

An honest lab report ...


Here is a lab report (via Pharyngula) that's brutally honest, and very, very funny. Its conclusion about the experiment is:

Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should've declared CS. I still wouldn't have any women, but at least I'd be rolling in cash.

Do note that the report is hosted on the website of the CS Department of the University of Wisconsin ...

Monday, May 08, 2006

Why not a 4-year Bachelors program in science?


The two Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune and Kolkata have already advertised their admissions process for the academic session starting in July 2006. These institutions don't have a website, yet. So, I am not able to comment on their faculty strength, or infrastructure.

The two IISERs are entirely new, autonomous institutions, and they have nothing at all to do with IISc. In particular, they are not 'branches' of IISc!

The USP of IISERs is that that their faculty will do undergraduate teaching and pursue basic scientific research. UG teaching differentiates them from CSIR labs and their academic counterparts (such as TIFR and IISc ;-) that offer only doctoral (and/or masters) programs. Basic research differentiates them from the run-of-the-mill colleges that do UG teaching, but have little research footprint.

In short, IISERs are to the sciences what the IITs are to technical fields.

Well, that's the theory. It turns out that the IISERs will not offer a 'pure' UG course; what they will offer is the 'integrated' masters course leading to the M.Sc. degree in five years. Such a program already exists in several IITs, except, of course, that it is confined to physics, mathematics and chemistry. To my knowledge, IITs don't offer this program in biology.

I believe this is exactly where the IISERs have missed a great opportunity to improve on the current UG programs in the sciences. Specifically, the launch of these institutions could -- and, IMHO, should -- have been used to create a 4-year bachelors program in the sciences. In order to differentiate it with the current B.Sc. degree programs, let me refer to it as the BS program.

What are the advantages of the 4-year BS program? From the point of view of a student who is also a science enthusiast, there are quite a few. The first, of course, is standardization; this would be a step to make all our UG programs be of the same duration: 4 years.

In particular, the 4-year BS program will bring science on par with engineering. At present, science students have to slog for five full years -- and get their M.Sc. degrees -- before they can be admitted into Ph.D. programs -- either in India or abroad. With the 4-year BS program, this difference will go away, and science graduates can 'save' one year.

In the eighties, the engineering curriculum underwent a major revamp, which pruned the B.E. or B.Tech. courses from the then existing five-year programs intothe current four-year version [I belong to the first four-year batch; our batch graduated in 1985 together with the (last 5-year batch) students who entered college one year ahead of us, in 1980.]

The current five year slog for M.Sc. makes it unattractive to a student who's agnostic about choosing science as opposed to engineering; in the present system, I wouldn't be surprised if he/she ends up choosing engineering. You want evidence? Just look at the cut-off ranks for the four-year B.Tech. programs and the five-year 'integrated' M.Tech. programs in the IITs. Even within the same engineering discipline, the five year program is considered to be less desirable! When this is so, a five year M.Sc. program in the sciences is even less desirable.

Granted, over the life span of a scientist (i.e., a 30 to 35 year career), the loss of a year should not be important. But, teens -- and more importantly, their parents -- just don't think that way! From this psychological point alone, a four-year BS program makes enormous sense.

So, IMHO, removing this barrier would do a great deal to make science more attractive. [This is not to deny the importance of taking other measures to make science careers attractive: such careers must pay a lot more than they do now, and our universities have to spruced up with better funding and infrastructure.]

Well, what might be the disadvantages? I can see at least one. And that is from the point of view of those students whose main interest is somewhere else: management, computer applications, Indian civil service, chartered accountancy, or any one of their equivalents. These are students who just need a degree -- any degree! -- to get on with their real goals. For them, a 3-year B.Sc. program is better than a 4-year BS program!

Research departments, as a rule, should cater to those who are going to stay in the field; not those who are planning to bolt! So, science departments at IISER, IITs, and our Central universities (which offer 5-year M.Sc. programs) are better off with the 4-year BS prorams. Simply because it's in the interest of those students who are likely to contribute to their field. Right now, by continuing with their 5-year M.Sc. programs, they are repelling an important group of students: science enthusiasts. And that, I think, is a terrible shame.

Our senior scientists -- and in particular, the biggest of them all, Prof. C.N.R. Rao, Chairman, Prime Minister's Scientific Advisory Council (SAC-PM) -- have been bemoaning the lack of interest among our teens in pursuing careers in science. The formation of IISER is a direct result of addressing a keenly felt need: availability of high quality centers of science education, where UG students would be taught by practising scientists. However, by going with the tired old option of the 5-year, integrated M.Sc. program, the IISERs are missing the bus. Again.

* * *

Whatever I have said here is about science education, about which I think I know something. What about courses in humanities? Social sciences? Commerce? Business Administration? Would a 4-year bachelors program be better (than the current 3-year program) for these disciplines, too? Perhaps I can request some of you to comment on this point.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

The central role of failure in engineering?


[Failures] are object lessons in the history and practice and beauty of engineering. "Failure is central to engineering," [Henry Petroski] said in an interview. "Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail."

From this NYTimes profile of Prof. Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering at Duke. The introduction to his new book Success through Failure (Princeton University Press) is here.

Here's an interesting sentence from the article:

For Dr. Petroski, acceptance of uncertainty and possible failure — he calls it "coping with the imponderable" — is what separates the "given world" of the scientist from the "built world" of the engineer.

How to become an expert?


"I think the most general claim here," Ericsson says of his work, "is that a lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it." This is not to say that all people have equal potential. Michael Jordan, even if he hadn't spent countless hours in the gym, would still have been a better basketball player than most of us. But without those hours in the gym, he would never have become the player he was.

Ericsson's conclusions, if accurate, would seem to have broad applications. Students should be taught to follow their interests earlier in their schooling, the better to build up their skills and acquire meaningful feedback. Senior citizens should be encouraged to acquire new skills, especially those thought to require "talents" they previously believed they didn't possess.

From this great NYTimes piece by the Freakonomics duo, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Link via Tyler Cowen, who also points to other resources related to the article: an old, link-filled article in the Economist, a link-filled note on the Freakonomics blog and Ericsson's home page.

The key to becoming an expert (at anything, actually) is the process called 'deliberate practice', which "involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome."

Blog discoveries


I was lucky to have discovered -- in one day! -- three interesting blogs; they are now on my bloglines subscription list.

The first one is Vivek Kumar, an IIT-B alumnus who now works in the government. While he has been writing on many different things, right at this moment, I want to link to his thoughtful post (and comments) on reservation.

The next is the Nomological Net by Tabula Rasa, an (Indian?) academic based in Hong Kong. His recent posts have looked at what is common between class room teaching and seminar talks, and at Morris Holbrook's ideas on the creative process.

Finally, through Tabula Rasa, I found Pankaj Bagri's blog whose sidebar says "you won't be worse off" if you don't get to know him; a good enough reason to want to get to know him! Do check out this post on the 10th birthday of his new life and the next one on the Stockdale paradox.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Happiness (and pain): The tricks our minds play


Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

From the guest review by Malcolm Gladwell over at the Amazon.com site. The book Stumbling on Happiness is by Daniel Gilbert (whom we've met before).

Thanks to Tyler Cowen, we have links to two articles on Gilbert's research on happiness. From the first piece:

"People are wonderful rationalizers," Gilbert points out. "They will rearrange their view of the world so it doesn't hurt as much." [...]

The same holds true for lovers who break up. Rationalization quickly replaces devastation. "She was never right for me," the spurned lover says. "I recognized that when she threw the ring in my face."

And, from the second piece:

The problem, as Gilbert and company have come to discover, is that we falter when it comes to imagining how we will feel about something in the future. It isn't that we get the big things wrong. We know we will experience visits to Le Cirque and to the periodontist differently; we can accurately predict that we'd rather be stuck in Montauk than in a Midtown elevator. What Gilbert has found, however, is that we overestimate the intensity and the duration of our emotional reactions -- our ''affect'' -- to future events. In other words, we might believe that a new BMW will make life perfect. But it will almost certainly be less exciting than we anticipated; nor will it excite us for as long as predicted. The vast majority of Gilbert's test participants through the years have consistently made just these sorts of errors both in the laboratory and in real-life situations. And whether Gilbert's subjects were trying to predict how they would feel in the future about a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, the defeat of a preferred political candidate or romantic rejection seemed not to matter. On average, bad events proved less intense and more transient than test participants predicted. Good events proved less intense and briefer as well.

You might also be interested in this NYTimes article by Sandra Blakeslee about how anticipation of a painful event makes one want to just 'get it over with ASAP'. What might be the implication of this finding?

The research also sheds light on economic behavior, said George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University. According to standard economic models of human behavior, choosing more pain in the short run is irrational, Dr. Loewenstein said: if you know something bad is going to happen, you should postpone it as long as possible, and if something good is going to happen, you should want it right away.

In real life, people often do the exact opposite, he said. They delay gratification to savor a sweet sense of anticipation, and accelerate punishment just to get it over with. The new study sheds light, he said, on how the act of waiting can be used to describe economic behavior more accurately.

Another voice in support of reservation


... Is merit the ability to mug up scores of unwanted information from the zillion books and CDs that your parents buy and win a trophy trove in quiz contests? Is merit the ability to belt out the cash for the “competitive – exam” coaching centers? Is merit the ability to have parents who enroll you into posh private schools?? Do any one of us stop to think what we are , is what we were born into? I for one wouldn’t be writing this blog, if I were born to tribal parents in Nagaland, or to a poor weaver in kancheepuram, or a flower seller in Chennai. We really dont know how much of our "success" is sheer luck ...

From this great post by The Soliloquist, who has put together quite a few different arguments for reservation. The sensitive, straight-from-the-heart quality of her writing is impressive. A must-read.

Feynman interview


The Prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, observing the other people use it. These are the real things. The honours are unreal ... to me. I don't believe in honours. Honours bother me.

From this wonderful video of the interview of Richard Feynman. This snippet is from about 25 minutes into the video.

I remember this video doing the rounds in various blogs a while ago, but I couldn't watch it at that time (either because it was in some incompatible format or it wasn't available for download in India; I am not sure). Thanks to Krish, I got this working link -- at Google Video (finally!).

If you can't devote some 50 minutes of your time, I would suggest that you check out at least the first 15 minutes, in which he talks about his father: how he taught him the difference between knowing something and knowing its name; and, how he taught him disrespect for 'position' (he gives the example of people bowing to the Pope or to a General). At some level, his father is one of the unifying themes in the interview; for example, Feynman refers to his father immediately after the above quote ("My Papa brought me up this way!").

The last couple of minutes of the video is also priceless. He talks about the value of doubt ("doubting is a fundamental part of my soul!"), about how doubt and not knowing stuff are better than having absolutely certain -- but wrong -- answers.