Strange: Education

Hi, due to a technical issue at our end, your mobile services may temporarily get affected in Adyar. This is not the experience we want you to have. Rest assured, we are on the job to rectify the issue at the earliest - Team Airtel.

I was surprised. And somehow taken back few years down the memory lane when I used to teach fifth graders. There used to be a girl in the class whose milk teeth had fallen and the new ones hadn't yet come back, though she was in the 5th grade. Of course, the curiosity in me got the better of me and I used to ask the girl (in front of the whole class) when she plans to get her teeth back. One day she responded to me thus:

My father said it might take a looong time for my teeth to grow back and that you (meaning I) should just be patient and not inquire about my teeth frequently.

It sounded eerily like the message I got today.

Hi, due to a technical issue at our end, your teeth may not grow temporarily. Rest assured, we are on the job to rectify the issue at the earliest - Team Toothfairy.

Both Airtel and Anna found a way to shut me up by just acknowledging their problem but without a specific date commitment.

Friday, September 10, 2021

We Don't Recognise Jio

The pandemic hit us in March 2020. Since then our professional life has become all virtual and from home. Even for young students, it's all online classes.

This post is about such students. India has about 23 crore students studying in class 1 to 12 (from https://www.mvorganizing.org/how-many-students-are-there-in-india-2020/).

Assuming 40% of them belong to the lower income group (LIG), the number of such students from LIG would be about 9 crore students.

Imagine if the pandemic had hit the world 5 years back in 2016. India didn't have Jio then.

Jio disturbed the internet scene in India. It's because of Jio that India has a tariff of about Rs200 (USD 3) for a month of unlimited calls to anywhere in India and about 1.5GB data per day. And it's because of Jio that other ISP's telecoms had to follow suit with similar pricing and in the end most got such a financial battering that they had to exit the business.

For some prospective on data cost see: (though figures don't seem to be accurate)

https://www.ibtimes.co.in/india-ranks-lowest-global-mobile-data-cost-thats-great-news-heres-how-839072

The figures for India and Pakistan are given below.

Rs 6 /GB in India

Rs 17/GB in Pakistan (from a friend)

Rs mentioned in this post refer to INR only.

(https://www.phoneyear.com/pakistan-has-the-second-most-expensive-mobile-data-rates-south-asia/)

As I mentioned earlier, there is an estimated 9 crore young students whose parents would be in the lower income group. These are possibly children of auto drivers, milkmen, housemaids and such.

Imagine online classes for them - meaning getting used to internet, getting a smart phone, using internet data for online classes. All these has been possible for at least some fraction of those 9 crore students

Because of Jio, a good percentage (I don't know exactly how much) has been able to continue their studies online. Of course a lot depended on whether their family had or lost their source of income. But if the family could afford their school fees and books, Jio made attending online courses very possible.

Had the pandemic hit us 5 years earlier where would those students have been?

Take Pakistan in comparison where internet costs are comparatively higher. Imagine what their LIG students are going through. Those students are likely much worse off than their Indian counterparts.

Thanks, Jio.

Disclaimer:

The author has nothing to do with Reliance and they were not paid anything by the company.

Additional reading:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/02/coronavirus-india-school-closures/

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Buniyaadi Zimmedaari Of A Woman

A friend of mine recently related an incident mentioned to her by an author acquaintance (male) of hers.

When the gentleman was a young student, in one class period the teacher was showing some stuff to the students using a projector with the lights off. There was complete silence in the room until the lights were switched on after the presentation. It was then that everyone noticed a cloud of smoke at the rear end of the room that was apparently caused by the backbenchers smoking cigarettes while the rest of the class was engrossed in the presentation.

The author told my friend that such behavior of the students was not the fault of the students who were smoking during class. That it was the fault of the teacher who had been unable to kindle interest in these students sufficiently.

My friend, having recounted this story to me, asked me for my opinion. Did I concur or disagree with the author? She said she herself had mixed feelings.

I said I understood where the gentleman was coming from. The primary responsibility of a teacher is to create interest towards the subject in her students. Without this interest no student can learn much.

I told her I had two things to say about the opinion expressed by the author.

1st thing:

It's generally held in conservative cultures that it's the wife who holds the primary responsibility of maintaining the family order and maintaining the marriage - she having better patience, understanding, maturity than the husband. (And the husband has the primary responsibility of winning the bread and bringing home the bacon.). Now in this scenario, where a marriage has failed irretrievably, should we hold the woman solely or even primarily responsible for the breakdown of the marriage?

Circling back to what I said of the responsibility of a teacher towards her students, that is, to create interest in her students: Not all students have interest or aptitude in a subject. Even MF Hussein wouldn't be able to create any interest in painting in me. Even Sachin Tendulkar wouldn't be able make me bat well were he to coach me. Is it then appropriate to condemn Hussein and Tendulkar as being inadequate in their jobs as teachers? Whose fault would it be that I never could paint nor bat well?

The 2nd example I would present to refute the author's idea is to take one of his own books. Let's assume 10,000 people purchased his book and that 8,000 liked it a lot. And the balance 2,000 didn't. Shall we then say it was the author's fault that he couldn't get those 2,000 readers interested and fully involved with his book?

Any unidirectional communication (a presentation, a book etc) depends a LOT on the author to get the audience involved. Yes, of course. But then there will be some, or even many, in the audience, who have no skill / aptitude for the subject, whom the author cannot reach out to. Which Engineering teacher would be able to reach out to Raju Rastogi and Furhan Quereshi in 3 Idiots?

That there are such students in the audience is no reflection on the author or presenter.

I would consider a good teacher to be one who infuses great interest in part (hopefully large) of her students who benefit from her classes and who identifies and excuses the other part of her students from her class.

In the same vein, a good woman is one who identifies that the man she is with is not worthy of her attention, love and care and leaves with grace before she messes up her own and his life. This, I feel, is there fundamental responsibility of a woman.
Perhaps this is what Ludhyanvi meant when he said so beautifully "wo afsaana jise anjaam tak laana na ho na mumkin use ek khubsoorat mod pe chhodna accha".

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Harvard's Rat Race

Judge Rules Harvard’s Race-Conscious Admissions Constitutional?

“Even assuming that there is a statistically significant difference between how Asian American and white applicants score on the personal rating, the data does not clearly say what accounts for that difference,” she wrote. “In other words, although the statistics perhaps tell ‘what,’ they do not tell ‘why,’ and here the ‘why’ is critically important.”

Wow. This is an example of exquisite reasoning. That police officers could pull the trigger more often on an innocent black person than on an innocent white person may not really be an issue because the "what" may be known but not the "why".

That Hitler committed genocide may have been acceptable if we didn't know of his anti-semitic stance, right? Of course, knowing only the what" "without the why" is exculpatory.

When do we understand that the "why" doesn't change the what". Sooner or later, if you dig long enough" every why will have an innocent enough explanation.

Focusing on the emotional (or social) why" over the rational "why" is a sure way to get rid of any clarity. Read this https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/family-tv-serials.html.

Read also the sequel to this post. (https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/10/molesting-isnt-crime.html).

"Any algorithm that intentionally or not results in discriminatory treatment of women or any other protected class violates New York law,” from the link below.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2019/11/11/iphone-maker-apples-new-credit-card-has-an-awkward-problem/

Additional reading

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

IDMI And ITBC

I was initiated to the concept of "intention" by a friend about 20 years back. When something he did was not right, his reply would be that he didn't intend it that way. That response would leave me flummoxed. I didn't know then whether his response was appropriate, meaning relevant to my comment. But the response seemed to indicate that he wasn't at fault. And here I was left holding the baby (some thing that hadn't gone well which he was responsible for). And I had been intimated that it wasn't his fault.

Something didn't sound right.

Fast forward 20 years. I still hear the same refrain "I didn't mean it" (IDMI) or "I didn't intend it".

IDMI is an interesting expression that addresses an issue between 2 parties.

If you point out a problem that occurred because of what i did (or didn't) do, my IDMI essentially removes my culpability while perhaps acknowledging your predicament. It, hence, shifts the focus from a fault on my side to empathy shown by me towards you. It's likened to a scenesce where you tell me about your issue and I provide a shoulder to cry on. The IDMI changes the issue you raised against me to an issue you have that has nothing to do with me except that I am being nice enough to listen to your woes.

Wow that's a terrific change in balance of power, isn't it?

More recently I was talking to another friend of mine when I pointed out that he had not having discharged his responsibility. He told me that he had always deeply wished for it. Just that he didn't or couldn't do it (for years).

I asked him. If he were a teacher grading a student's paper, would he give marks for correct answers or for the student's intention to write correct answers. He replied that he would give marks only for answers that were correct. Most teachers would agree with my friend.

It got me thinking. How is it that we expect a correct job while correcting an answer paper but in a social milieu we go by the intention to do the right thing? It's as though we have a dual operating system in our mind where "has to be correct" OS is switched on at certain times (example, when we are correcting a paper) while "intended to be correct" OS is switched on as in some social interactions. Read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/rita-and-sheila.html.
Often even within the context of social interactions, we sometimes use the "has to be right" mode while evaluating whole in other cases we go by the intention. The focus on the intention is basically used as a final "correction factor" to be applied on top of the evaluation based on normally agreed formula. The correction factor gives us the leeway to change the final grades. The beauty of it is that it's completely subjective while seeming to be perfectly fair.

The switching between one "OS" to another happens seemlessly. For example, while correcting a paper, we may take a break and talk to another teacher about some incident at school or about our personal lives when the "intended to be correct (ITBC)" mode is switched on.

Once I read an article which went like this:
First there was an assertion about some behavior (I forget what exactly it was). It was followed by a declaration that the said assertion was a myth. This interested me immensely. So I read further. The author went on to explain the reason why the behavior was exhibited.
I thought then, so there is a reason for the behavior. Did the presence of a valid reason for a particular behavior have anything to do with whether the behavior is real or a myth?
The presence of a valid reason for a behavior is taken to imply that the behavior wantwa exhibited. Hence, if I do something wrong, I need to come up with a reason for my behavior. Then I didn't do anything wrong. IDMI is a way to nullify my negative behavior.

This ITBC cannot exist where words don't exist. An animal cannot communicate the ITBC sentiment. Animals only react to what some other animal did and not to what they intended to. A peacock cannot convey to a female that he intended to show more beautiful feathers but on the way they got ruffled and hence she should give the peacock a chance to pass on his genes. Uh uh.

Prior to the time before humans learnt to talk, we would not have known the ITBC concept. We would have evaluated and been evaluated based on what we did, rather than by what we intended to do. And then, somewhere in the world, the first human being uttered those words "I didn't mean it (IDMI)". Imagine the shock of the person who heard such a thing for the first time.

Over time, we have been moulded to give importance to what was intended apart from what was done.

One doesn't need a camera to see what was done. It's hugely more difficult to see what was intended. The rational reason behind understanding why something was done (understanding behavior) was replaced or confused with something that would induce empathy.

By replacing "correct behavior" by "intended to be correct (ITBC) behavior as our yardstick we have created a kind of an "equal opportunity" institution in the social arena.

It doesn't matter as much if I didn't do the right thing so long as I can convincingly aver that I intended to be correct. The balance of power is moving towards those who can convince better from those who do better.

This would lead to the extinction of those who can't persuade or convince better, for example the peacock mentioned earlier. Read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/06/relation-between-nt-sf-natural.html

Additional Reading
http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/01/survival-of-fittest-non-t.html

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Recruitment Lesson 101

My first attempt at fiction:

Imagine you are 27 years old. And your fiance ditched you. You are distraught. You don't have much of an academic background. You don't know what to do professionally. Nor do you want to get married again.

A kind gentleman in his 50s approaches you and explains that you currently have nothing to look forward to. He gives you a proposal. How about joining in his mission to create the best educational institution. You don't have anything else on your plate. What the man said was enthralling. What choices did you have anyway? So you hooked up with him and started a school.

Years have passed.

You now have a purpose in life and you feel fulfilled.

What did the man get from you? An energetic, passionate dog, loyal for life. You would think nothing of perjuring for his sake. (How the cartoon would love such recruits!! Instead he has Rod Rosenstein, Michael Cohen.)

Win win for both, no?

Like a friend used to tell me, you should recruit for attitude, train for skills. Occasionally the lack of deep talent would result in gaffs. But attitude trumps talent.

Corollary:
If you are a passionate and loyal person, identify an Enneagram 8 to hitch your wagon to, even if you are kinda short on the talent department.

Additional reading

Thursday, July 19, 2018

What Is A Prostitute

A 13 year old student asked THE question "What is a prostitute?" to her Hindi teacher. The teacher was flabbergasted and asked the child to check with the Biology teacher. The Biology teacher mentioned this incident to my friend, who teacher in the same school, and asked her how one should respond. My friend recited this incident me. I asked my friend to help the Hindi teacher but she wouldn't, rather couldn't.

So I thought I will give it a shot.

There are many activities that happen between two people. Example: Marriage happens between 2 people and we call the people involved, spouses. Another example is employment. The people involved are employer and employee. Yet another example is sales of goods and services. In this case, we call the one who provides the services as the supplier or seller or vendor. The one who purchases is called the buyer or customer.

One of those services, mentioned above, is sex. The person who sells sex is called a prostitute. The buyer of sex has no special name while the person who facilitates the sale, who brokers the transaction, is called a pimp.

Financial perspective:
In many cultures and countries, sex is considered sacred and hence a blatant sale of the same is taboo. Prostitution is the act engaged in by a prostitute. A sexual act is termed as prostitution and the provider termed as a prostitute only when there is explicit payment of money involved and when the buyer and seller aren't spouses. In a sexual act between spouses there is no such transfer of money immediately following an act or prior to the act purporting to be payment for services rendered. Hence such act between spouses is not prostitution. Even sex between friends is usually a social activity with no direct payment involved. Only when sex becomes a commercial activity does the act become one of prostitution.

Social perspective:
In many conservatives cultures, a prostitute is held in poor esteem. That is because sex is considered sacred and its sale is forbidden. Now people can become a prostitute because of these reasons:

Poverty leads a person to become a prostitute. Prostitution is termed as the oldest industry - meaning it's almost as ancient as mankind. There isn't much technical skill requires except the ability to provide sex to a customer. Here an easy way to escape poverty is by becoming a prostitute. Of course, one usually becomes a social outcaste then. In addition are medical problems like AIDS that a prostitute is likely to contract.
This too is money related but it's distinctly different from poverty. In this case, people engage in i.e., sell sex because there is a huge demand for special / "high class sex" - for example for sex with exceedingly good looking girls. In these cases, a person becomes a prostitute not because of poverty but in order to enhance their income.
A third could be blackmail - "Unless you become a prostitute, i will..."

And so on.

Moral perspective:
If you ask your parents or your teachers, you are likely to get a reply that prostitution is repugnant and is to be avoided - visiting one or becoming one. In many countries the act is illegal and one could be fined or jailed for engaging in it. Sex with many people or unprotected sex with unknown people is medically dangerous and is to be avoided. Beyond the medical and legal issues, it may bring about a moral dilemma. Whether it's just another business transaction or is it inherently repugnant? Children born out of heterosexual prostitution usually will lack a biological father in their life - no matter whether a prostitute is male or female, only the female bears the child. These are some of the things one has to remember while contemplating prostitution.

Which gender is a prostitute?
Usually sex is sought by males more than by females in most species including humans. As a result of this demand an opportunity that seeks to address this demand is created. In majority of the cases, the supplier of sex, the prostitute is female because (A). Majority of sex is heterosexual. (B). The customer is mostly male.

Exceptions are presented below:
Type of sex. Gender of prostitute
Gay Male
Lesbian Female
Heterosexual with female customer Male

In the movies:
The role of a prostitute (usually female) has been portrayed in movies often. Two movies come to mind which show an outstanding character of a female prostitute: Amar Prem (Hindi), Pretty Woman (English).

Finally: Which part of this blog's content was inappropriate for a 13 year old or embarrassing for a female teacher to explain to students of that age? Why did the teachers get paralyzed by the question? Of course when a mischievous student asks what sex is one can THEN direct that question to the biology teacher.

But prostitution is not synonymous with sex and this subject can be explained by anyone - not necessarily by a Biology teacher.

Much of the issue comes from our belief: that sex is taboo. And that one should always deny knowledge of the subject and also deny experience in the act. As Aamir Khan asks Boman Irani in the movie PK, how is it that we are so embarrassed to admit publicly to owning a condom while at the same time we happily inform the whole world of our marriage (and the ensuing first night, honeymoon etc)?

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Skills Needed for Coordinator Role In School

A friend of mine asked me about the skills needed for a coordinator role

Terrific follow-up and keeping track of who is to do what and whether on track. Some people are good at this. Some aren't.
When things aren't done as per expectation, ability to get it done without complaining to boss each time... This requires social skills
Being knowledgeable so you can be a good person to reach out to for teachers... And being able to provide solutions for weird situations

How you would be evaluated is:

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Did you get the things done as per quality and schedule agreed upon?
Did teachers complain about you? What is their feedback about you?
When a particular teacher had an attitude or competency issue which you couldn't have resolved, did you escalate immediately?
Did you avoid escalating issues unnecessarily? Meaning did you minimize escalations

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Different Points Of View

A few years back I used to work for an institution. Some incidents happened at the institution that annoyed me immensely. I called up the head of the institution, gave him a piece of my mind and told him I was leaving effective immediately. And asked him not to reach out to me. Ever.

A few days after the incident a good friend of mine berated me for having acted irresponsibly and said that I should have waited 2-3 months when the project, I was working on, would be completed. And that it was unacceptable to her that I had created a lot of problems for the organization by quitting in the middle (ok. fag end) of the project.

I gave a good thought to what she said. I then called up the head of the institution and told him he might be having difficulty because I had quit abruptly and that I could stay till end of the project 2 months away. Though my decision to quit was final, I told him I could work offline for two months, communicating only with him (and that none in the institution need know of my involvement) in order to assuage the situation. The gentleman told me he will consider the offer and revert. He didn't take up my offer. And that was the end of it.
Until today.

I heard that the head recently told another employee about me and that I had wanted to stay on for three months and that he, the head, had put his foot down and had had me leave immediately.

That a single incident could be seen so differently by two people is fascinating. The remembering self sometimes stores a different version from what was experienced.

What the gentleman did was no different from what Ajay Devgn did in the movie Drishyam telling people over and over that he and his family had not been in town on Oct 2nd and 3rd and that his family was in Panjim that weekend - so much so that his friends and acquaintances were willing to swear to his version of the story. Now Jeethu Joseph might have taken the gentleman, referred to in my story, to court for having stolen his theme (of asserting an untruth) but then he, Jeethu, himself is in trouble for having plagiarized a Korean movie''s story for Drishyam.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Minimize The Effluent To Be Stored Inside Factory

Assuming you have 100 kg of dilute ore (containing very small amounts of precious metal = PM), how do we determine the weight of ore to be disposed of and balance retained inside the factory? The ore is not homogeneous meaning the concentration of PM is not same in each kg of ore.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Lord Ganesh, Munna Bhai, Kabhi Haan Kabhi SRK And Shortcuts

A student wrote herself additional marks in an exam paper in red ink and tried to fool her teacher into believing that the teacher had not totaled the marks correctly. The student did this because her (student's) mother had warned her daughter that if she didn't get good marks she, the mother, wouldn't talk to her daughter. The daughter was not interested in exams or in marks and she chose the red pen as the tool to address this issue.

This is very similar to what SRK did in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa where he got a fake certificate and Mark Sheets to prove that he passed his exams because he couldn't stand the taunting of his father. SRK again, in the movie, had no interest in marks or in passing the exams.

We come to Munna Bhai MBBS. Sanjay Dutt (or Kamal Hassan in Vasool Raja) couldn't stand his father's taunts and hence fooled his parents into thinking he was a doctor. Again in the movie Sanjay / Kamal had no interest in being a doctor.

Now we come to the final example. Lord Shiva and his wife conducted a test for their two children. They said whoever could go around the world first would get a reward. Now Karthik (one of the sons) was physically adept and he immediately set off for on his around the world mission. The other son Ganesha was a boy who lived in a mental world and he was physically not strong. He twisted the target set by his parents - he went around them and claimed the prize explaining that for any person their parents constitute the world. The parents were dumbstruck and then very pleased and rewarded Ganesh. Whether Karthik (aka Murugan) complained about his brother's unfair practices is not known.

Now we read 4 stories. In each of them the parent expected something from their child. The child had no interest in it. But in order only to satisfy the parents, the child took a shortcut. In the first three cases, the shortcut is found unacceptable. In the case of Ganesh, the shortcut was found admirable, even though his parents never imagined such a solution..

Did Ganesh violate the rules of the game? In my book yes.

Now, Kabhi Haan and Munna Bhai are fiction stories. The first example I mentioned is a real life example. It is quite possible that the girl's parents had often told her the very same Shiva-Ganesh story mentioned as the 4th example in this post. And yet we blame the girl while we adore Ganesh for his smartness.

Friday, September 1, 2017

NEETliness Should Be Next To State Boardliness

Anitha, a poor Dalit girl from rural Tamil Nadu, committed suicide because she couldn't get a medical seat despite excellent marks in the state board plus two exams: http://www.news18.com/news/india/anitha-the-face-of-neet-protests-in-tamil-nadu-commits-suicide-1507155.html

One assumes that NEET is an appropriate exam for evaluating whether a candidate is fit to be admitted to a medical college as a student. And if a student who got 1176/1200 in the state board exams does very poorly and in the medical entrance exam and hence didn't get admission is it the state's fault?

No matter how poor she was or that she was Dalit.. It is sad but if on the basis of this girl's death were we to remove NEET it would be even worse a scenario.

What is the basis of the state board syllabus and education?

That children should get 12 years education and should not be failed and that the syllabus and exams should help ensure minimum failure.

How is this system going to create the best engineers, lawyers and doctors of tomorrow?

Having said this, i wonder now. What if Anitha was my daughter or my sister or my wife? How would i feel?

A student that gets 98% in board exams is unable to get a medical seat. She comes from a rural poor community. She has banked her entire future on her getting an MBBS seat and it is now denied her.

How painful it must be when you have done all that you could and performed exceedingly well only to be thrown out based on some idiotic NEET? If I never knew about NEET and never prepared for it and if my teachers never taught about or for NEET, it will never be relevant to me. Or to my sister or daughter. Am I at fault if I felt dejected.

What if we followed Bhagvad Gita and put in our best efforts and never focused on the result only to find out later that a result focus is imperative in life and actually more important than putting in the best efforts. How would we feel? That's what happened to Anitha. The interesting thing is no matter which side won (NEET/CBSE or State Board) there would have been some Anitha who would have taken the drastic step. We have children IN TN state who had focused only on NEET and did not focus on State Board exams.

What is the issue here?

The issue is the dual conflicting goal that we have. That the state board is foisted with or cherishes the goal of simple rote memory led education.

The professional courses or industry requires something very different and perhaps more difficult.

Should we:

Make NEET syllabus the lowest of all board syllabi?
Should all state boards change their syllabus to those meeting IIT, NEET etc requirements?
Should TN colleges not allow other board students at all?

Additional reading:

Friday, August 4, 2017

Affirmative Action

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/affirmative-action-battle-has-a-new-focus-asian-americans.html:

This link above writes about Affirmative action and how it's upheld or violated, depending on your point of view, in colleges in USA.

The article above refers to an Asian American being rejected by Harvard university despite being very well qualified for the reason that Asian American admissions far exceed their representation in the American population.

From the Asian American's point of view, the university's rejection of his application is unfair. But when Asian Americans (and earlier Jews) take up most of the seats available who becomes the disadvantaged group? The whites, hispanics etc. And affirmative action works in their favor now.

If the criteria for selection is not only merit but also diversity then someone who is good has to lose his seat so that someone else can be allotted the same seat in order to provide the said diversity.

If Asian Americans get 50% of all seats while they constitute only, say, 20% of the population then don't the rest of the races become disadvantaged?

If women make up 70% of all CXO positions, won't affirmative action kick in and try to get more men into executive position, regardless of whether the men had merit or not?

Affirmative action exists to help groups who are much less represented than their population "warrants". And if one group does exceedingly well, then it will start losing seats in order to ensure affirmative action still applies.

Affirmative action thus exists to prevent monopoly of a race or gender or whatever.

Additional reading:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/black-people-arent-keeping-white-americans-out-of-college-rich-people-are/2017/08/04/e478952e-794a-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.7e1c71bb5212

Friday, July 7, 2017

Entrance Into AFMC MBBS- NEET 2017

Assuming you have got an All India Rank of 6500 and you are in the General Category.

AFMC has 130 seats, of which 25 are for girls and rest for boys. Overall 10 seats are reserved for other castes.

Boys Girls

Seats 105 25

SC ST quota 8 2 (this is my guess of the break up of 10 seats)

General 97 23

Numbers that will be invited initially 1200 300

Numbers above you in NEET 4800 1700 (my guess)

It is possible that the actual breakup of 6500 may be tilted more towards girls than boys than shown here. It could be 3800 boys and 2700 girls. In such a case all estimates would change accordingly.

For you to be called for counselling in AFMC, we have hope that at least 3 in 4 boys above you don't opt for AFMC and only one fourth of students with rans higher than you opt for AFMC (1200 / 4800 = 1/4).

And of the 1200 that are invited about 1100 (1200-97=1103) should be rejected on some ground or hope that students themselves opt out of AMC for you to get admitted into AFMC.

I wonder how it was last year. What is the basis by which students who are called for counseling admitted (into AFMC) or rejected? Medical fitness only? Anything else?

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Observations On The Educational System In India

The other day my brother was telling me that the IIT's (Indian Institute of Technology) aren't ranked in the top 25 engineering institutes in the world. I replied that I had read that they aren't ranked in the top 100 even. (http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOICH/2010/09/17&PageLabel=10&EntityId=Ar01000&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T) He wondered why... In India the IIT's are very highly reputed.

That set off a train of thought. This is something I had been thinking about for a long time. The students who come out of IIT's are very bright. They go on to do their masters and doctorates in reputed colleges in USA like MIT, Stanford etc. And many of them go on to work in organizations like Bell Labs or NASA. There is no doubt that the students who graduate from IIT are "high class".

Now that raises a question. What are the factors that result in "high quality" of students who graduate from an institution?

I think there are primarily two factors.

What kind of students are taken in? What is the entry criterion like? Very high bar or a fairly low bar? (The better the quality of raw materials, the better the quality of finished product)
What kind of value add is done in the institution? Does it convert a fairly "inferior" raw material and process into a high grade?

It's my belief that in the IIT's, as well as in other institutions of learning, the quality of students graduating is largely determined by point 1 above and to a very small extent by point 2 above. Meaning the students who are gifted go on to do well. The school itself doesn't convert the not so gifted ones into high grade. And IIT's have a fairly high entry barrier and hence the students passing out also are relatively better. No thanks to what happens inside IIT (to the education inside).

Now is this really so? Meaning isn't there much quality teaching in IIT's? What about quality research?

To answer that question (just a yes or a no) let's see the factor that is relevant in an institution for higher learning. "How much are the institutions trusted (and hence) involved in solving problems?".

Let's take some examples:

Water scarcity in many towns in India in the coastal regions.
Electricity shortage and the abundance of sunshine in most parts of India.
The frequently recurring train accidents in India.
Heavy engineering: Construction of airports. Incidentally yesterday, (a couple of days after I wrote the first version of this blog) I was talking to a friend of mine who is privy to the expansion plans of one of the major airports in India. The current status of that airport, as he explained to me, corroborates this point.
Cooum (a stinking river in Chennai) desilting.

I have listed some of the very common problems (or areas) faced in india which need an engineering solution. How many of these problems are solved in India (as against technology obtained from elsewhere and "adapted" locally? To the best of my knowledge most of these have been solved largely through technology acquisition than by indigenous development. This despite having 5 (now more) such IIT's - the so-called "high end engineering institutes". Now if we wont depend on our own institutions to solve our basic problems, if we won't eat our own dog food, it reflects a rather poor trust that we have on these colleges.

Why aren't these institutes ranked among the best in the world? Why don't we go to them for solving our problems?

This is not just because the teachers aren't good or that the facilities are not adequate. I think the issue goes deeper than that. Culturally Indians have always been good at solving (read: memorizing) solutions for known problems.

Right from the time we were kids we were encouraged (I should say we were forced, not encouraged) to repeat what our teachers/elders said. We were actively discouraged from independent thinking. "Why don't you just write what is there in the text book? Why do you have to change the wording?". Remember these words from our parents/teachers?
In India it's perfectly acceptable (as a matter of fact it is insisted on) that we take large chunks of material from other textbooks or references and submit the same as a paper/essay. In USA, the same action would be strongly discouraged and considered as plagiarism (unless the material is given appropriate reference and inserted inside quotes). In India, we believe anything can be trusted only if we didn't create it ourselves.

See the difference in culture? This resulted in Indians dreading any open ended problems. It's like how a child hates darkness. We have been forbidden to go THERE (THERE meaning the unknown); to look inside THERE, to explore THERE. Born and raised in such a culture, how do we ever send a man to the moon or or design a new rocket or a submarine?

While South Africa hosted the World Cup Soccer game to perfection about a month back, one just has to look at the struggle India is going through, (to host the Commonwealth Games due to start in 2 months time), to realize how pathetic our performance has been. South Africa and India are ranked 129, 134 respectively, in the Human Development Index. Here is an article explaining the basis of India's success as an economy
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CUN20100925&articleId=21182). While the article is extremely critical, there is some truth in it, which we need to reflect on.

Indians knew about eclipses and could predict them thousands of years before physicists like Galileo Galilei, Newton or Kepler came along. Indians had a flourishing civilization, their literature dates back thousands of years. See this link which tracks the economic strength of India and China in the last few hundred years:
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOICH/2010/08/22&PageLabel=16&EntityId=Ar01601&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T. I wonder how Indians solved problems then. They must have been were very good at problem solving many centuries back. Somewhere as time passed, they have gotten into a rut.

How does one get out of this rut? When do we learn to solve our own problems? When do we understand that it's ok to think independently?

Additional reading: (Updated on 16th July 2015)

8/20/10, 5:52 AM

Pacific Daylight Time

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Estimating AIR (All India Rank) And Percentile

This post has to do with number crunching and perhaps would be only interesting to people who are interested in that area and who perhaps want to estimate the AIR and percentile from the NEET marks.

Now that NEET marks (out of a total of 700) are available, I have had to estimate the rank of a candidate who has got, say 600, marks. I looked up this link under the section "NEET 2017 Cut-off For AIQ Seats". As per this link, 14315 students will have marks from 685-468 marks (out of 700).

Now comes the interesting part.

How do I estimate the AIR (All India Rank) of a student who has got 600 marks?

The easiest way is to assume that all 14315 student marks are spread out equally between 685 and 468. In such a case, the rank of student-600 is about 14315*(685-600)/(685-468) =5607 approx.

But then this is very likely to be grossly incorrect because it assumes that the number of students between 685 to 585 is the same as between 585 to 485. In reality, perhaps student curve may be more like a bell curve with very few students near the maximum marks and again very few students near zero or minimum marks while the majority of students will be near the middle. How do we model this?

Here I assumed that students having marks between 685 and 10 marks less than 685 (= 675) will be 20. And students having marks between 675 and 665 will be 20 times a factor that is more than 1 (say 1.3). 26 students (=1.3*20) would have got between 675 and 665. Number of students who got between 655 and 645 would be even more than 26 (I assumed it will be 26*1.3) =34. And so on. Until we get the number of students having marks between 475 and 465. If you remember, number of students having marks between 685 and 468 will be 14315.

Now that we estimated number of students in each slab of 10 marks, we can sum up and estimate the total students who got marks from 685 to 465. Now this may not equal 14315. If it is not equal then we tweak the factor which we assumed to be 1.3 until the sum total of students with marks between 685 and 465 matches 14315 more or less. And thus we get a good estimate of the number of students in each slab of marks 685-675, 675-665 and so on till 475-465.

With this, we are in a position to find out the AIR of the student who got 600 marks. That rank will be approximately the number of students who got more than 600 marks. Let's say his All India Rank came out to be 737. And let's say 200,000 students wrote the NEET exam. The percentile for the student would be (200000-737)/200000=99.63.

200000-737 being the number of students whose marks were lower than that of the student we are considering. Actually this itself is another approximation. There would have been many students who got the same 600 marks as our student. So the number of students who got lower than 600 would be less than 200000-737. But this is ok for an approximate estimate.

This is the spreadsheet which shows the calculations for NEET. Of course the estimates are heavily dependent on the assumption that 14315 students got marks between 685 and 468.

If anyone is interested in getting this estimate, you can leave a comment on this post.

There is another link which predicts NEET rank. The link predicts the ranks against marks as follows (data as on Jun 20 2017, 1PM)

Marks Estimated Rank
680   1 - 10
670 11 - 20
660   21 - 50
650   21 - 50
640   51 - 100
630 51 - 100
620 101 - 150
610 151 - 200
600 251 - 500
590 251 - 500
580 501 - 1000

Additional reading:

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Friday, July 22, 2022

Monday, July 18, 2022

Monday, July 4, 2022

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Friday, September 10, 2021

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Friday, September 1, 2017

Friday, August 4, 2017

Friday, July 7, 2017

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

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