Skewed data - Stats again

For those who didn't understand the photo :

Background Statistics -
A normal distribution curve is symmetrical bell shaped curve bla bla bla, which I'm sure you know

Skewed curves are seen when the distribution is not symmetrical. It can either be Skewed to the left or the right (see picture)

Now imagine a Skewed curve, depicting the average income of a person and the number of people.
When it's a Gaussian curve, you'll see that - the majority of the people will be in "middle class", some will be super rich and some will be poor.

Now what if that is actually not true? Our graph will get Skewed. This can be of two types.
1) most of the people have an income higher than the average. Mode is greater than the mean.
This is called Skewed to Left, because the graph dips on the left side. And as per the convention, left is also the negative axis. Thus we also call it negative skew.

2) similarly, when most of the people have their income that is less than the average, and very few people own a major chunk of wealth, we call it right skew or positive skew.

And here comes the Eureka moment where you compare them with ideals and philosophies.
Left wing socialists / communists to right wing capitalists.
I'll leave it here for you to ponder over it, gulp it and ruminate it 😉

Exams

Exams!
These are systems in place since ancient times. Conducting an exam is very similar to doing an experiment.
You do an experiment or a trail to separate salt out of water. You need a suitable experience or a test for that. You can choose to distill the water or evaporate the water.
Or suppose you wish to separate iron particles from sand. You hover a piece of magnet above it.

Similarly, you wish to segregate the able from the less able student, for which you need to do some experiment or some examination. But please note, you can't use distillation to segregate iron and you can't use magnet to get salt.

In the same way, you cant use drawing as a test or a criteria for picking out good dancers. And finally, you can't use MCQs to choose the better doctors!!!

Keeping that aside, the pattern of exams for their respective specialities has been more or less constant. Physical tests for being in army, memory based tests for science, calculation based tests for engineering, logic based tests for IQ, grammar based tests for language, etc

Coming back to the corollary, very few new experiments or methods of segregation have been devised recently. So I thought about a new test for finding out the "street smartness" or pragmatic approach of a person.
We can ask the person to define very simple and trivial things. And mind you, things like
- thought
- dream
- soul
- love
- sky
- magic
- death
- to be alive / to live
- good and bad
- sleep vs coma
- aim vs objective
- wind vs air
- friend
And more and more things can be added to the list, forever.
Asking a person to define these things for you, will give you an insight into the thinking of that person. It may help us to "judge someone" better.

Till then, kindly comment if you know of more such words that are difficult to define but everyone knows about it. Thanks!

Why is the incidence of Cancer increasing?

I read the first chapter of Parks, book of Preventive and Social Medicine for the first time today,
That led me to Ponder over this :

Man was plagued by diseases (Pun intended) created by the piling of garbage, rapid industrialization and poor city planning, during the 17-19th centuries.
These diseases had micro organismic causes and soon the Germ Theory of Diseases was propounded by Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur.
The invention of microscopes soon led to the discoveries of pathogenic micro organisms in quite succession in 1940s to 1970s.

Soon, Man succeeded in developing chemotherapeutic agents that could kill these agents. Cheaper and widespread availability of drugs led to its drastic use and subsequent fall in acute infectious diseases was noted.

Man, at this point, had mingled with the mother Nature. He tried to alleviate fellow humans and increase standard of living by prolonging the expectancy of life.

The next generation which followed, had the luxuries of lesser infectious diseases but, Nature had another challenge in store for us.

Chronic non infectious, lifestyle or genetic diseases became more common. Drugs for cancer have become the Holy Grail for modern Medicine.

Some day when mankind achieves victory over these chronic diseases, age related debilitations will prove to be the limiting factor to the immortality of mankind and then we will have to search for anti aging drugs and elixirs of life.

"Nothing is immortal in the material world" will finally dawn to the homo sapiens sapiens and that's when, man WI learn to lead a simple but meaningful life.

Diabetes, Drugs and Darwin

I'm back to writing on the topics I love so much! Philosophy!

Are you still wondering about the title? Well diabetes and drugs are palatable and there's nothing new in it, 

Giving drugs is decreasing the quality of our gene pool

We are fooling ourselves

My perception of the world as a child was:
"I'm born in the 21st century and we are the most advanced generation. Humans have progressed so much that all the questions have answers"

Now that I read literature, it dawns upon me that we have always fooled our selves. What we only have are models and hypotheses. This which have arguments and counter arguments. Continuously criticisms and discussions are going on in the world.

How else will we Progress unless we questions to available answers

# be curious

A rotten Apple spoils the Barrel

 A Rain Drop

I saw a drop of rain water,

Diving towards the ground,

No question on it's purity,

It's immaculacy knew no bound.

It provoked me to think about its future,

Whether it cleans or it quenches,

Will it prove to be an elixir?

Or will seep into the trenches?

Will it make itself comfortable amongst the droplets of that muddy pond?

Or Will it become a part of Ganges, you bet,

Oh Lord! Good you didn't give it brains to make a choice for itself...

As even homo sapiens sapiens have made no difference yet....

Humans are influenced by their peers

Oh Humans! if they had a choice!

A child born, as pure as a rain drop,

Inherits religion and is influenced by peers, without ever raising its voice!!!

-Parth Gada.

What I wanted to convey through the poem:-

Title-A basket full of fresh fruits but one. That rotten apple can rot others as well.

Poem- A Rain Drop, is very pure in nature. As it decends towards the ground, it at first gets contaminated because of atmospheric gases. Ignoring that, the drop will attain the quality of which ever medium it falls in. 

   The drop has no choice, it is subjected to the physical forces and laws of nature that govern the universe. But we humans! We make a difference. Because, we can "choose". We can choose, what surroundings we want, what friends we want. 

  A person who befriends people who smoke and drink, end up 'trying' it one day! A person who sees a friend in a particular guy, his quality is very likely to be induced in him.

   A magnetic substance when placed in a magnetic field behaves like a magnet. A piece of iron, when in contact with a magnet at one end, itself temporarily behaves like a magnet. 

  A person who stays in a happy environment, feels happy and satisfied. A child who only sees famines and droughts and terrorism...how do you expect him to know what is love!

   If you are in a place where an epidemic broke out recently, you are very much vulnerable to the disease!

    With all these examples, I wish to convey only one thing- "choose wisely"

•choose a good medium for that drop of water. 

•choose to be in a basket where there are no rotten apples 

•choose to be in company of friends who correct you if ever you go wrong

•choose to be under a correct guru (magnet) whose ideals you ll follow. 

•choose to build a happy environment around you

•choose to be in a healthy place. 

•choose to LIVE A BETTER LIFE ....

Informed decisions

 I'm waiting at Elphinstone road station. I need to reach Malad as soon as possible. In Mumbai, every minute counts! It's evening. I just saw 05.11pm borivali slow crawl (yeah 'crawl'- it's Mumbai) away in front on my eyes when I was on the bridge. And being unsuccessful in tackling the crowd on the foot over bridge, I missed it!

  Next train I saw was of Andheri. ( uh god! Why don't we get things, when it's needed most 😡). So I opened the mobile app about the train schedule. Saw 5.14 Andheri. It reaches dadar at 5.16pm. Saw a train for virar That begins from Dadar. If I just take andheri train till Dadar and change to virar train? Then I check for the next Borivali train. It's at 5.20pm. Oh god. Can't wait for so many minutes. 

   Then I found the time at which each train reaches malad. Borivali slow reaches at 5.57pm. But the virar train (that originates from Dadar) reaches malad at 5.50pm! Done. Decided. I changed the train from bandra. To avoid the crowd in Dadar. 

  Now, as I'm writing this blog, I'm in that virar train. Thought to pen it down instead of cursing the Indian railways all the way.

  But. The moral of this blog is NOT to show you how to save time. Neither to promote any app. 

   It's to make you understand the term- to make an informed decision. I was well informed about the system. Cherry on the cake was that I was also well-versed with Indian railways. This helped me save my time. Made me more efficient.

  Now you can look at it from two angles. 

-> how few companies cheat people by not informing them about the products. Not telling them about harmful toxins present in items they sell or for example-

 Your mobile network provider dupes you by not disclosing minute details. In other words, consumers are cheated by the small and simple "*" in an advertisement!

   Looking at politics, India would become so much better if we know the crime history of politicians, the productive work done by them in their respective constituencies, how do they collect funds, the details of bank accounts and black money stashed abroad! If we had all the information available at a click!

  Another angle could be...

->it explains the need of having experienced people. An experiened player in a team will share his knowledge for the benefit of all. Similarly, an experienced teacher, it explains the Need of having real teachers and not merely gadgets.  

      It teaches us the importance of education. Today, countries with high or almost 100% literacy rate are consisted developed. If we achieve absolute literacy in India, it would reflect on human development index. The quality of life a common man lives will improve. It also shows us the importance of infomation. Of decision making. 

      We can kill the darkness of ignorance by the light of knowledge. 

Learn; Unlearn; Relearn.

    A very respected teacher in my college says- "everything in life comes in threes. The process of learning also involves three stages- learn, unlearn and relearn". Further, "whatever we are learning may be wrong, but to put forth a better theory one day, you must first know what's wrong!" 

   These words set my mill of thoughts,  churning..........

   Synapse- it's an anatomical gap between 2 neurons that allows "contiguity" of nerve impulses. It's also the form of storage of our memory. 

   So when we learn something- a new synapse is formed. And applying the same idea to unlearning, that synapse must be disappearing so that we 'forget' that. 

   But in case of "unlearning", we must be making another synapse which must be allowing us to remember that what I have learnt is wrong. And further, which would allow us to compare the differences between new theory and old theory. Further if an emotion has been attached to this process, the memory is stronger in our minds. 

   Then finally comes "relearning". Where a new approach to the same basic concept, incorporating new ideas and understandings enables us to overcome the shortcomings in the old theory. This is how we progress. This is how mankind has set on a journey to decipher everything- from an electron to the cosmos. 

    For example, let's look back to this history of- structure of an atom. 

    We began with saying that atom is the smallest, indivisible part of a substance. Then came plum pudding model. But it couldn't explain alpha particle scattering experiment. Then came planetary model but it couldn't why electron stays in its path and not collide into the nucleus. Then quantum theory. And so on.

   While watching a show about humanity's existence and our creator, Renowed physicist Stephen Hawking talked about "the best-fit theory". 

    He gave an example-

A man opens a room and finds a table in the centre of the room. There is nothing and no one else in the room. He goes out. And comes again after 10 minutes. He finds the table in that same place where he had last seen. The man thinks that the table was at the same place all the 10 minutes that he wasn't there. This is the best-fit theory. He simply uses his logic.  But...maybe the table flew out of the window, encircled the planet and came back just before the man entered again! Or maybe- some other person entered the room after he left, shifted the table beside a wall, left, third person entered and brought the table to the same position. The original man still thinks the table didn't move. 

   This is how we see. Actually, what we see is not reality. It's a virtual world that we are seeing. We keep using this 'best-fit' model and try to understand things.

   Since this blog has been uploaded from my site, you think that I have written this blog. This is what fits-best according to you. But who knows if someone hacked my account and posted this on my behalf! The possibilities are endless...can you think of other such theories?