One of the most mindblowing things I learnt while I was doing my undergrad in Computer Science and Engineering was Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression. It’s one of the standard compression algorithms used everywhere nowadays. The reason I remember this is twofold – firstly, I remember implementing this as part of an assignment (our CSE program at … Continue reading “Compression Stereotypes”
A few people who I’ve spoken to as part of my job hunt have asked to see some “detailed descriptions” of work that I’ve done. The other day, I put together an email with some of these descriptions. I thought it might make sense to “document” it in one place (and for me, the “obvious … Continue reading “Record of my publicly available work”
A lot of parenting books talk about the value of consistency in parenting – when you are consistent with your approach with something, the theory goes, the child knows what to expect, and so is less anxious about what will happen. It is not just about children – when something is more deterministic, you can … Continue reading “Uncertainty and Anxiety”
During the 2008 financial crisis, it was fairly common to blame experts. It was widely acknowledged that it was the “expertise” of economists, financial markets people and regulators that had gotten us into the crisis in the first place. So criticising and mocking them were part of normal discourse. For example, most of my learning … Continue reading “Expertise”
I seem to be becoming a sort of “testing expert”, though the so-called “testing mafia” (ok I only called them that) may disagree. Nothing external happened since the last time I wrote about this topic, but here is more “expertise” from my end. As some of you might be aware, I’ve now created a script … Continue reading “Tests per positive case”
The “tweetstorm” is a relatively new art form. It basically consists of a “thread” of tweets that serially connect to one another, which all put together are supposed to communicate one grand idea. It is an art form that grew organically on twitter, almost as a protest against the medium’s 140 (now raised to 280) … Continue reading “Blogs and tweetstorms”
There has been a massive jump in the number of covid-19 positive cases in Karnataka over the last couple of days. Today, there were 44 new cases discovered, and yesterday there were 36. This is a big jump from the average of about 15 cases per day in the preceding 4-5 days. The good news … Continue reading “More on covid testing”
Those of you who know me well know that I keep taking these social media sabbaticals. Once in a while I decide that I’m spending too much time on these platforms, wasting both time and mental energy, and log off. Time has come for yet another such break. I had a bumper day on twitter … Continue reading “Yet another social media sabbatical”
When Gary Becker was awarded the “Nobel Prize” (or whatever its official name is) for Economics, the award didn’t cite any single work of his. Instead, as Justin Wolfers wrote in his obituary, He was motivated by the belief that economics, taken seriously, could improve the human condition. He founded so many new fields of … Continue reading “Beckerian Disciplines”
Whenever there is a massive stock market crash, like the one in 1987, or the crisis in 2008, it is common for investment banking quants to talk about how it was a “1 in zillion years” event. This is on account of their models that typically assume that stock prices are lognormal, and that stock … Continue reading “A banker’s apology”