The Middle Class

This post is partly inspired by the usage of the term "Middle Class" by a friend of mine who is now at Microsoft. I guess he must have forgotten this by now.

One of the perks of being a Computer Science student is understanding the process of Abstraction. Well simply put abstraction is knowing something on a need to know basis. One of the best examples is a light switch. We all know that if we turn on the switch, the bulb glows. We certainly don't have to know what processes are triggered when we turn on the switch or how the electrons flow from one place to another or the so.

My definition of talent is sometimes abstracted to only two levels : 1)The middle class, 2)The Wunderkind. The Wunderkind is an enigma. He can be the basis of the theist rebuttal argument to the atheist. He can achieve what he wants and the achievement will come as no surprise to anybody. His successes are awe-inspiring. Everyone aspires to be him, but it ain't that easy. The crests and troughs in his brain are wired for greatness. Add a few qualities like hard work, discipline and commitment and hey presto! you have a machine whose output is always correct. Talking about him is only redundant for you all have seen him somewhere in your life.

I now go to The Middle Class. In the line PQ, if point P is dull and point Q is genius, our hero will stand at the mid point, i.e (P+Q)/2. He is at a certain advantage here. He surely knows that he has to move forward thereby increase his proximity to genius. He also knows where a fall back would lead him. Surprisingly enough! you would see that in life it is Middle class that struggles much harder than anyone. Nothing is given on a platter to him. He needs to work hard and even harder. The Law of Equivalent Exchange is only for Physics and Chemistry. Life does not work that way. He faces constant failures but his endeavor to succeed never ceases. By Hook or Crook he shall try to move a rung up in the ladder of success. The Wunderkind has genius in him, but the Middle Class has fortitude in him. It is this fortitude that carries him forward. It is this fortitude that allows him to scale heights. It is this fortitude that inspires his fellow Middle Class to work harder. He looks in awe at The Wunderkind and tailors the ethics to suit his needs. In life he has a higher percentage of survival and success thanThe Wunderkind. Oh! if you look around you would see that he is not affected by any criticisms. He has a sound mechanism to block it and carry on with his work.

Now why did I write this post? It is because I also came across What it takes to be great?. Oh yeah I guess I must have posted this long ago somewhere else too, but then one shouldn’t forget the article, not because it gives the hope to an otherwise dull mind, that it has all the ingredients in it to aspire for greatness, but because it motivates the same dull brain to come with, at least a percentage of work that is considered better than ordinary :-).

The Trophy

“Ok guys! That’s it for the day. Have a nice weekend! Make sure you are all safe and keep yourselves fit for our match on Tuesday”, hollered out the Captain to all his boys.

The Knowledge Systems Incorporated had recently announced a Cricket Tournament to raise the mood of its employees. Around twelve teams had registered for the tournament and Ram A’s Team was one among them. His Captain, Venky P had a lot of faith in his boys and believed that they could go the distance this time, provided everybody practiced a lot. He was the most enthusiastic as well. Venky P was the fast bowler of the team , not to be confused with his namesake, ex-Indian player Venkatesh Prasad who bowled some of the slowest leg cutters, Venky.P was express fast. In the practice trials his raw pace had knocked out one of the organizers cold. The tall frame of the Captain bowling reminded him of Curtly Ambrose striding in with his sweat bands. The rest of the team wasn’t a pushover either. Their senior most player, a research scientist, who was named after his parents’ favorite OS Ubuntu, was a very good fast bowler. In addition to these known faces, there were a lot of enthusiastic new joinees, who were keen to prove their worth. The ground that day was certainly filled with a lot of employees sweating it out, perfecting their back-lifts or trying to bowl express fast deliveries. Some of the enterprising folks were also working on their fielding skills.

Ram A , was a die-hard cricket fan himself. Gone were the days when he could play really well. As a young kid, he cherished the hopes of becoming a cricketer, but then so does every other kid in the country. This tournament presented an opportunity to regain some of that child like enthusiasm. I am growing older, so why not have some fun when there is the opportunity.

“Enjoying it aren’t you?” asked Siva excitedly to him. He was the organizer of this tournament. An idea conceived by him, which had received the whole hearted support of the entire corporation. Siva somehow had convinced the top brass to award prize money to the team and had also got a handsome trophy, worth a huge sum for this particular tournament. The amount of cash spent for the tournament meant that there was a lot of seriousness around, and that every other team wanted to place their hands on the coveted trophy, which in itself was worth a little fortune.

Ram A had a careful look at the trophy the previous day. It was a gleaming silver cup on a golden pedestal, bearing no inscriptions. His colleagues who caught him gazing at the cup longingly, chided him playfully for wanting it so much. Ram just looked at them and smiled.
Suddenly realizing that he had important things to do, Ram turned to Siva and asked him rather casually,

“Ohh Siva! do you have a Facebook account?” .

“Dei, Who doesn’t have one?”, A bemused Siva replied and handed Ram his id.

Finding a new Facebook friend was a norm in this Internet era. If you had a new acquaintance, you’d be more likely to add him on Facebook, sooner or later. That’s how the brave new world of social networking worked. It had started with the popular website Orkut in the early 2000s and slowly moved to Facebook. As you know Facebook makes the world a smaller place. Through status messages you could post what’s on your mind and all your friends would see that. In addition there were features also to let people know your location and also what you are doing currently. Status messages like Bought a wonderful new car, Finally proposed to my girl!, I ate Pasta at Pizza Hut now and it tasted yuck, My house is burning like hell now!... was common parlance, and everybody wanted to beat the other one in show casing their inanities. On top of it, you could also post your photo albums with nice captions. This was a new world indeed, albeit virtual.

On his way home, Siva was lost in his own thoughts, Oh! I have to update the trophy’s picture. I’ll get a picture of it from my terrace and upload it tonight. And how can I not show the glossy gift vouchers? How can they be left alone? League of Champions sounds a good album name.

****************************************

He called himself The Dark Knight. Yeah! After a tiring day as a Software Engineer, he always figured out that night time was the best to carry out his activities. He considered himself a freak! An aberration! He thought that his name was very ironic, since he was probably somebody who did more wrong than right. He slipped into the thief mode only during exigent circumstances. Nobody ever figured out where little things were lost, and the police also couldn’t easily find a motive. Random people losing house hold items that cost in thousands don’t really raise alarms every other day.

Siva has accepted your friend request.


He looked at the notification with a wry smile. Let me click on info.

Siva has added new photos to the album “League of Champions”.


There was more information that made him smile. He realized that it is going to be his day after all.

Siva is attending a “All night party at XXXX-Café”.


Casually he went through the album. Any other person would have wondered on why he spent so much time looking at each photo in detail. But he likened his activity to a kid who fills in a jigsaw puzzle. Aah there is the first piece. Sure enough, there was a picture of Siva holding the trophy in his hands. Ok before any suspicions are raised, let me ‘like’ it.

You and 75 other people like this


He decided that a like was not enough. A comment to show his keen interest in the trophy seemed harmless.

*Sigh*, I wish the trophy were in my home now :).

****************************************

The thief decided that he had enough of fooling around and focused on the remaining pieces of the jigsaw. Ohh look! A Hotel near his house. This is going to be a cake walk. Sure enough, Google gave him the location of the hotel. These days it’s so easy finding an address, he thought. Luckily for him the city he lives in was covered by Google Street View. All he had to do was to key in the address, and behold, a a panoramic view of the entire street was presented to him . With a few clicks, he was able to spot the house which would be the scene of his crime.

The night was young, and so was the thief. He entered the house without any trouble, and was inside in a jiffy. The absence of alarms or security systems ensured that he had no troubles whatsoever. The trophy gleamed even in the dark. I’ll allow him to keep the vouchers, he thought benevolently, looking at a set of vouchers beneath the trophy. He opened his bag, got some tools, and with the dexterity of a master, dismantled the trophy. Each of these parts is going to be worth something.

****************************************

The pawn broker at XXX-Street wore many hats. One of them was buying stolen goods from petty thieves and maid servants in the city. Many a time he would end up paying much little for the stolen good than it was ever worth. Today, as he was ruminating on the lack of customers, a young man entered the shop. The pawn broker recognized the familiar face, and beckoned to him. The young man took the rusty chair available and spread out his wares on the table. A smile ensued from the lips of the pawn broker. The bargain was then stuck and money was exchanged. The young man bade the pawn broker good bye and went on his way.

****************************************

The police registered a case in the morning. What was lost would not cause a ripple in the bustling scene of crime in the city. They were sure that the thief would never be found, but they still had to do the paperwork and the other formalities, not to mention the false assurances.

****************************************

Ram A was very excited on that day. His team had won the Cricket Tournament. Both the teams in the final had fought really well, braving the heavy rains that lashed the city on that day. The tournament went on despite the fact that the trophy was lost. After all the presentation ceremony was over, when everyone was trudging along, Ram found Siva, sitting alone in melancholy, ruminating over probably the lost trophy and losing in the finals. Ram thought it was appropriate to console him. “You played really well Siva, I am sure you can win the trophy next time”. Siva gave a weak smile and said, “But we can never get the company to sponsor us for a new tournament again, all because of my mistake”. Ram A consoled him and walked towards his departing team members. As he ran, a wet slip of paper fell out of his pocket without his knowledge, and the name “Ramchand Jain-Pawn Broker...” could be made out from that worthless piece of scrap.

PS: If you have read this not-so-good piece till here, thanks a lot :)

Face-ing your future

A lot of you are absolutely aware of what Web 2.0 means and what change that has brought about. Among the plethora of changes that it continues to offer, the rise of Social Networks and the way it permeates into each of our lives is no longer something new. To be fairly honest, articles talking about the rise of Social Networking and the way people interact on Facebook these days sounds trite and contrived. Yes they exist, but how do they transform computing in general? I haven't found a lot of articles that talk about what is in store for the next two years in terms of computing and in terms of what to do with the wealth of information that these networks dish out to us and what techniques are used to tackle them.


While a single glance at a Facebook page, one can really predict the type of the user. *This applies to any human who just looks at the profile and the Wall updates, along with the frequency of updates*. While I am not going to discuss on the updates that focus on how a single great looking female's inanity has been appreciated or how a certain celebrity's foolishness has been applauded, I am certainly looking at how these obscure status messages can turn into potential business goldmines.

Coming to the crux of the situation. A seemingly innocuous status message like "My dream!" along with a picture of a "Porsche Cayenne" gives an indication that the poster is concerned about or even likes that car. If Chaos Theory can argue that the fluttering of a butterfly's wings can cause an earthquake on the other side of a world, surely a status message can prompt a lot of businesses to latch on to the opportunity. While not everyone might want a "Cayenne" but surely a lot of us might want Xboxes, Wiis, Cameras, Mobile Phones, Kindles and what not? Enter Natural Language Processing. For decades AI researchers have talked about how NLP can be used to understand text. While most of these projects were really academic and served as interest to a lot of scientists and researchers, their true test comes out in this age of the unstructured data. A system with even 50% of accuracy, when run on a set of 100,000 status messages can give you a substantial idea on what people are talking about. Why then, these businesses can utilize this to directly talk to the user, probably come up with offers and go one step ahead in the marketing of the product.

Even as we are talking a lot of people are looking at this problem and are figuring out ways to solve them. One of the greatest challenges in building such a system has been the way in which such a system can be show-cased to the client. While Human Beings can be inane, nothing can take away their brains from them. So where are the stumbling blocks to processing this?

1)How do you understand the domain that the user is speaking( Even if the domain is resolved, how can the machine evolve and learn? Can parsers co-exist with ontologies? Is an ontology based parser probable? If we claim that the brain has an internal wiring and then assuming that ontology is the poor cousin of the brain, can we parse?

2) How do you present it as a sell-able product? What kind of examples do you show case the client? This is definitely the biggest challenge. The challenge arises from the fact that the client here is definitely presented with a virtual goldmine hidden in some treasure chest and the problem is that he does not know how do get to the goldmine. More often than not the client might get the wrong assumption while looking at an application. The way he tests it should be on the same lines that the program was tested. How can both the business user and the application developer align their thoughts? Very critical as it makes or breaks your product.

3) Finally how do you scale the system?. Scalability is always the question in many applications, but in my case I'd rather say, how easy is it that the system learns new patterns. Can it apply the patterns from one domain and use the same to extend it to another domain? Would that be a worthwhile route to take?

Loads of questions, very little and diverse answers, the future, probably is not bleak, but then there are tough times ahead for products which don't embrace the power of Social Networks.

A verbal thought (Literally)

Wrote this in my company blog today and since this space keeps languishing every once in a while, I thought I'll update it here

How does the human brain process speech? How does it understand the semantics of language? If there are ambiguities, what mechanisms does it use to resolve? For example lets have a look at these sentences, He is a man of simple wants and He wants money.

Admitted this might be more for people who are interested in Artificial Intelligence or probably wonder how to build systems that understand text. In one of the scenarios that I was working, I came across something fascinating. The words need and want are very interesting. As a noun they really don't require an object action to finish the sentence. They themselves become synonyms. For example look at the sentence He is a man of simple needs. Assuming a machine can process that needs is almost a noun here and can identify the underlying meaning behind needs, you have an absolutely great semantic engine.(I'd use the word semantic as it makes more sense :-) ).

Now here are two interesting sentences :

I need a camera.
I want a car.

In both the cases the verb is a simple verb and requires an object i.e camera or car to complete the sentence. Processing them is a breeze for some of the systems today. Heck! even a rudimentary system developed by us can process these kinds of sentences.

Lets get into a more specific scenario. Now the goal is to understand how verbs like need and want behave. Lets introduce a bit of anarchy (literally) and see if these words behave just the same?.

I need to purchase a car
I want to buy a house in Chennai.

Notice anything different? At first glance you see that there are two new verbs introduced purhcase and buy. Well both of them essentially means the same. You could also add construct to the second sentence. Now you have two verbs in the same sentence. How does your brain resolve? Do these steps happen?

1) Decide that need takes in an object to complete it's meaning.
2) Looking for an object action, come to purchase a car, buy a house.
3) Realize that purchase and buy are two verbs which in turn require an object action to complete their sentence. One cannot literally say I want to buy. There is always the question of What action that follows the verb.
4) Then decide that want to purchase actually points to a desire to verb. i.e desire to purchase.

Essentially when faced with words like want, need, a system cannot just process them alone. It has to look for the other verbs in the sentence which aid in their meaning. So the secondary verb is of more importance or is the deciding factor in the sentence. If any of you can help me figuring out much complex situations, you are welcome. I just am pouring out my thoughts here.

One should marvel at the wonders of the human brain. All of us could handle these sentences even in our first standard. In trying to mimic the brain, I just am stumped at how the brain handles complex things in such simpler steps. As for me, I think finishing the Wren and Martin book again, with a deeper understanding of each of the parts of speech is something that cannot be put down for ever :-).

Correction:I had written this in my company internal blog and Rb corrected me at the parts where I have crossed the text. This is his comment :

In my view it is "I need to act" and that action could be "run" or "purchase a house". The What is not mandatory. The "house" to me belongs to the action of "purchase" and not of "need".

Though "I want to purchase a house" is semantically similar to "I want a house"; they cannot be treated the same. Examples of the form "I went to purchase a house" or "I want to sell my house" show the tie-in of the "house" to the "action" and away from the "want".