Sound & Color

Whenever you mix two colors, you always get a new color, at least that's what our eyes tell us.
However, when you mix two sounds, you can still identify them individually, either as aesthetically pleasing or as noise. The same can be generalized for more than two colors or sound. Mixing multiple colors create a perception of a new color, the same does not hold true for sound.

Laws of physics govern both science of color as well as sound. However, I think evolutionarily human ear is more developed than eye as an organ. That's why we cannot distinguish two colors being mixed, however, we can identify two different sounds. May be ears have evolved over a longer time scale than our eyes have!!

[Note on 01/29/2012: The above conclusion seems to make sense with my newborn baby, who can hear fine but eye-brain co-ordination is still developing]

That brings me to the following questions:

There are colorblind people but is it possible for someone to have defective eye or gene somehow so that he/she sees the world in black and white? 

Why there are only 3 primary colors(Red, Blue & Yellow)?

Why do our eyes can detect only 24 frames per second? Anything faster than that will detect in brain as moving object.

Intuition

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - thus spoke Albert Einstein.

I find it quite strange that a scientist like him ever quoted that. May be we need to read it in the context of the overall conversation when he said that. Perhaps he was alluding to the importance of being imaginative.

The following simple examples show that following simple intuition does not always lead to truth and science teaches us to experiment and probe.

Sun 'rises' in the east and 'sets' in the west but Sun is not moving, rather it's earth which is moving! It seems trivial now but scientists had to fight hard to prove it to society.

Earth is round. However, wherever you go you see it is flat. You drive thousands of miles, still you see it as flat. Again, intuition tells us that it is flat but it is not.

Anyway, Einstein also said, "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

Need vs Want

We loosely know what they mean but always have hard time categorizing them. Copying from http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/economics/wantsandneeds1.htm 

A need is something you have to have, something you can't do without. A good example is food. If you don't eat, you won't survive for long.

A want is something you would like to have. It is not absolutely necessary, but it would be a good thing to have. A good example is music. Now, some people might argue that music is a need because they think they can't do without it. But you don't need music to survive. You do need to eat.

I have tried to put the above concept in a diagram and classified the red quadrants as type I & type II errors. Basically, you probably should not want 'things' that you don't need(Type II error) and also not say that you don't want 'something' even though you actually need it (Type I error, actually harder to identify). 

Quality x Quantity = Constant

Type II Error

Even though I did my post-graduate studies in Statistics, but by profession I am not a Statistician. However, data/fact driven analysis and testing of hypothesis always interest me. This article claims that the inherent problem of a human developed system (economic, biological or whatever else it might be) and the reason it dies down over a period of time is that the Type II error rises.

Let me just quote from Wikipedia about the standard definition of Type I & Type II errors:

A type I error, also known as a false positive, occurs when a statistical test rejects a true null hypothesis (H₀). For example, if a null hypothesis states a patient is healthy, and the patient is indeed healthy, but the test rejects this hypothesis, falsely suggesting that the patient is sick. The rate of the type I error is denoted by the Greek letter alpha (α) and usually equals the significance level (orsize) of a test.

A type II error, also known as a false negative, occurs when the test fails to reject a false null hypothesis. For example, if a null hypothesis states a patient is healthy, and the patient is in fact sick, but the test fails to reject the hypothesis, falsely suggesting that the patient is healthy. The rate of the type II error is denoted by the Greek letter beta (β) and related to the power of a test (which equals 1-β).

Now, let's take an example.

We all know that when it is red light at a traffic signal you are supposed to stop and go on a green. No errors or mistakes committed. Now, the two errors that can happen are, 1) not stopping at a red light & 2) stopping at a green light.

We all understand that of the above two, it makes sense to reduce occurrences of 1, as it might cause accidents.

When someone jumps a red light, in some places there are sophisticated mechanisms to punish that action by automated means of picture taking etc. or police giving tickets. This is an example of minimizing type I error.

Now, the other error, which is not talked about, is when someone stops at a green light. All of us had that annoying moment when you curse the person in the car in front of you for not moving fast enough at a green light. So, while it does not cause an accident it does cause annoyance. Hence, there is a need for reducing type II error. But, how do you do it?

Let's take another example. Allergy, which is so common in developed world can also be looked at as a type II error or a false negative as well. Body's allergens think it is under attack and tries to resist it causing allergies. It is quite well known that allergy is pre-dominantly a developed country problem. Poorest parts of the world do not face allergy problem, not that much.

Here is another example that my school teacher used to tell us to help explain the concept. He used to say that type I error is like punishing an innocent person and type II error is letting go of a criminal. We can only imagine the horror of a society filled with criminals.

The next example is one of my favorites and very relevant in the United States. You want to have a gun to protect yourself. Not able to protect yourself by not having a gun is type I error. But, misuse and abuse of having a gun in terms of mass shootings is type II error, which is rampant throughout the world today.

The following examples are in the context of computers/internet.

For your email box legit message delivered as spam is type I but a spam message delivered as legit in type II error. We all have experienced that annoying feeling of receiving a spam in inbox!

In the context of hacking, when an authorized user is treated as a hacker is type I error but hackers treated as authorized users is type II, which we definitely don't want.

The next example is related to air travel security screening at an airport. An Innocent traveler considered as terrorist is Type I error and a terrorist considered as innocent traveler is Type II error. We definitely again don't want that to happen.

In all of the examples above, the point is that not able to reduce type II error without comprising type I error is causing havoc in the systems where it happens.

I will revisit this post later to make any corrections and add more arguments etc.

End of Franchise?

Franchise thrived because of ease of credit, which is drying up fast causing the franchise businesses to crumble.

At least this would be true for certain consumer products & services. Instead of high end and costly label items everyone will start buying stuff from local stores, art & craft fairs etc., which anyway produce hand made, and unique items. With ever growing internet based businesses and social media to promote them, home based small businesses are easier than ever to operate.

I think this is a good thing. Mom & pop shops will thrive, which effectively will mean small businesses will grow. Small businesses are true drivers for organic growth rather than cancerous growth of food chains, retail stores etc. Instead of buying cheap made in China products from Walmart, preference will be to buy locally made products, which will also mean less carbon footprint.

Gene & Environment

The graph here is trying to explain the four quadrants of gene & environment combinations at play in our life. Needless to less any one with possession of good genes & living in a favorable or good environment of learning and excellence will be successful in life. That's the green quadrant.

The other extreme is the red quadrant. The yellow quadrants depict situations where only one of the factors out of gene or environment is good. The arrows point the transition of one state to another. One can physically move from a bad environment to a good one by choice. Regarding genes too, as the latest research on epigenetics show, one can by food habit , lifestyle choices and medication bring about mutation in genes in a human life time allowing us to transition from bad to good genes. This is still somewhat fuzzy and will take more research to pin point and develop as a strategy. The state transitions could be bi-directional as well, because, again by lifestyle choices and making environmental change, one can land from green to yellow or even to red quadrant.

Note on 08/20/2011: I came across this article today, which explains epigenetics very nicely and also probably adds a correction to my diagram above to say 'epigene' instead of 'gene'. It's because the epigenetic markers are switches for the genes to be expressed or not. One cannot change gene in a lifetime but trigger the epigenes, which in effect turns on or off the genetic expressions.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952313-1,00.html

Life's A - B

So, it turns out that many things in life can be equated as A - B. You have to increase something and reduce something else at the same time to have a net positive effect. It's just not enough to look at A & B separately.

Here are some examples that come to my mind.

Savings = Income - Expense

Profit = Revenue - Cost

Personal Health related:

To loose weight = Exercise - Food

To gain weight = Food - Exercise

Economy's Health = Value of Goods & Services produced - Debt

First two are straight from the books. It seems like a pretty simple equation but we have such a hard time following it at private & public level.

The case for higher gasoline prices

With the ever increasing budget deficit the buzz in the blogosphere seems to be a case for higher gasoline prices at the pump. Some economists at academic level and politicians on both sides seem to agree that it's the right thing to do. But, it's also a very unpleasant thing to do as well.

In this blog, I will also rattle about the same and try to rationalize that decision.

First of all, regarding the debt, people of the US should be very happy that they enjoy the reserve status of their currency, had it been any other nation it will be on it's knee by now with so much borrowing and accumulating deficit and would have faced a currency devaluation.

Secondly, as one of my friends reminded me yesterday that people who seem to have an agenda or vested interest are the loudest. They may not have any clue as to how things work but they are the most vocal in expressing their special interest. Ever so confident and cocky that general public fails to doubt that they may be wrong.

So, here are the points to ponder for higher gasoline prices at the pump:

• A large portion of the money will go towards paying off the debt and the cost of quantitative easing

• Pinch at the pump will force people to start considering carpooling and using the public transports, however unpleasant it may seem, that's what the rest of the world does. You get to talk to the strangers and share a joke or two :)

• It will reduce the heavy traffic congestion in the bigger cities and surrounding neighborhoods to some extent and the time spent behind the wheels could be used more productively!

• Paying for higher gas price is more egalitarian measure than the income tax cuts or increases. Both rich and poor will be happy or unhappy to the same extent

• Right now a lot of renewable energy sources are not profitable enough to be commercially viable because of the low gas prices and many of them, say, solar industry enjoys a tax break as well. Higher gas prices will make these renewable energies more profitable and gradually start to replace some demands of conventional energy sources. Among the renewable sources, algal oil is my favorite. It follows the physical principles of hydrocarbon fuel generation but reduces the time taken to produce them(thanks to the algae) through natural processes.

• Not to mention but it will also reduce the dependency on foreign oil and the need to support despots and dictators around the globe sitting on a pile of natural oil abundance and making money out of insatiable demand from US consumerism and probably using that money to buy arms and ammunitions(probably from US companies) and training terrorists and mis-informing and brainwashing the local population and fueling anger against the United States!!

• People will start considering working closer to home and thus demand of those housing will increase and house prices closer to offices will appreciate in price and those farther away will go down in demand and lower the prices, bringing it back to the natural state of stability. Building of high rises will also increase as a result, wherever possible.

• If any consolation, high gas prices is what other developed countries are paying as well, and for a while, including the nations where they have oil reserves, case in point, Norway.

I remember speaking to a top level executive at a consulting firm in Germany and he mentioned that he prefers to travel with his colleagues in train rather than driving and he said he is not an exception and people do have a sense of awareness about not to drive unless absolutely necessary.

Lastly, the 'selfish' side of me can start boasting of owning a hybrid vehicle that I purchased back in 2007. Whoever has seen the documentary 'Who Killed the Electric Car' knows that it was not about technology but about politics that electric cars did not make it sooner.

Now, this is a mind shift and change of strategy because a lot of money was invested in the past to develop the freeway system and public policies encouraged urban sprawl and owning big houses in the suburbs and the car companies & oil companies lobbied enough to drive the public policies accordingly. It was a win-win for people who were winning!!

People will need to get used to living in comparatively smaller places if they want to live closer to office. If you read this article where an average house size is compared among the developed nations you won't feel bad. Also, historically speaking US is no exception either, because, according to this link, the average home size in the United States was 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970. One would wonder why! I have some thoughts which I need to write up some other day.

Rockbands

I have always wondered about the history behind naming of a rockband particularly of the ones which reads like "A and the B"; e.g Hootie and the Blowfish or Huey Lewis and the News. In this post, I will try to document as many of them as possible.

But why?

Just because!

I just love reading these names(loudly when I am by myself) and hope that someone else out there will also get some amusement and no-one will get hurt, hopefully! Obviously, I have googled to find many(read most) of them and have no idea which genre they belong to and which songs they have sang. But, I will try to listen to them over time, if time permits. Enjoy...

Hootie and the Blowfish

Huey Lewis and the News

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch(more like Hunky Mark and the Funky Bunch)

Big Brother and the Holding Company

Derek and the Dominos

Echo and the Bunnymen

Eddie and the Hotrods

Gerry and the Pacemakers

Tommy James and the Shondells

The Mamas and the Papas

Paul Revere and the Raiders

Siouxsie and the Banshees

Country Joe and the Fish

Jason and the Scorchers

? and the Mysterians (my favorite so far, this exists, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_Mark_%26_the_Mysterians)

That's all so far. I will add more as I come across...

Added on 02/27:

Thanks to the Oscars, I now have one more: Florence and the machine

A walk in the street

During my last visit to India after 2 years, I realized all over again that a walk in an Indian metropolis is either a treat or a mis-treat for your senses.

• one moment you taste the sumptuous dishes from a streetside vendor during lunch break at office and the very next moment you inhale the smoke and polluted air while walking back to your office

• One moment you hear the soothing music of sitar playing at a music shop and the next moment you hear a loud ear-piercing honk of a passer-by car

• One moment when you hold a silk saree or check out the intricate design of a kashmiri shawl and you appreciate it's beauty and craftsmanship, next moment you jostle to get in a busy train and rubbed by the sweaty and hairy hand of a co-passenger.

• One moment you smell beautiful 'jui' and other aromatic flowers at a street side flower shop and within five minutes you smell the ammonia of someone pissing by the street or even the paid toilets

• One moment you see a bevy of young girls beautifully dressed for a special occassion and your heart start racing and the next moment you see a few homeless & hungry kids begging for a few bucks and your heart starts crying

It is what it is, an enigma and paradox of an Indian metropolis...

Random thoughts - again

Most powerful positive emotion - Love

Most powerful negative emotion - Jealousy

When we do something out of feeling of duty or responsibility, over time we get emotionally tired. However, if you do something out of feeling of love, you are never tired.

Love, Sex & Marriage

Our existence inside this triangle. As the power of Sex & Marriage pulls you down, the strength of love lifts you up. If marriage & sex was taken out of the equation, love would be a truly wonderful thing!

How to google...

The other day I was typing "How to..." in the google page and it showed me the top 10 lists of "how tos" based on the latest stats, I guess. I was a little disappointed to see that "How to tie a tie" made it to the top even though I also don't know how to tie a tie!

It was so surprising to see that activities that should come to us naturally, like how to kiss or how to get pregnant, needs a google search ultimately. Even though I am a big fan of google, but, I do think that the Bing ad brings up a very good point about our mindless search of data!

Stretching my imagination, how stupid it maybe, I came up with the following storyline where the same person does all of the above searches. A little overweight single guy being lonely for a while decides to "lose weight fast". He likes a girl at work, but never talked to her. He wonders how does he "make her like him". Being innovative, he decides to learn "solving rubix cubes" while reading out an article loudly in a record time and uploads a video of that in youtube. He sends that link to the girl and she asks him back "how to dowload the youtube video" as she wants to copy it to her phone and show it to her friend who does not have internet connection(hahaha, possible, right?). Now, they start dating and one evening they plan to go to a fancy dinner and he decides to wear a tie, but not knowing how to tie a tie he resorts to google search. A few weeks pass by and they start liking each other and one night (lets give him a name now, say, Chris) after dinner, randomly searches a few things like how to kiss and how to become pregnant. Chris gets very excited that night by the thought of making her pregnant(lets give her a name too, say, Christina) and could not sleep. After a few months and having spent "quality" time with Christina, Chris decides to make his own website to write journals and publish pictures(lets assume he does not use facebook, blogs and such :))

Now, that he is kind of settled with Christina, Chris needs to find a better job(I dont know what he does now) and searches how to write resumes which catch employer's attention. After a few months, he lands up with a good job and proposes to Christina, which she accepts.

Even though he still sometimes sleeps alone but he is not lonely anymore, he often feels that he is in cloud nine. In one of those nights, when he is in cloud nice, he wonders how do other people make it in america...he gets up to do a google search on the same.

PS: Google did show an ad during superbowl which had some common concepts outlined in the storyline above

An idea of solving traffic congestion

Thats quite a bold claim is n't it? everywhere in the world, be it developed or developing nations people spend zillions of hour stuck in traffic. It's an omnipresent problem. Better city planning, more public transportation is definitely some way of solving the problem.

I have a totally different approach, which relies on randomness of events. Suppose, you generally leave home to go to office around 815AM every morning. You catch a train or drive your car or whatever. Similarly, every other person generally has a fixed time of leaving home for work or school unless they have a different appointment at a different time.

What I suggest you to do is to leave randomly at a time interval say, between 8:05AM and 8:25AM(8:15AM being the mid point of them). The idea is if everyone follows the same principle it will smooth out the traffic congestion. For example, look at the difference between a traffic signal and a stop sign. For a stop sign, a distance is created between two consecutive cars. The problem with this approach is everyone has to follow the same principle for it to work. One can get a random number generator to generate one between two intervals.

Thoughts on evolution

It is so surprising to find people who still does not believe in the theory of evolution but instead talk about intelligent design. I think the biggest problem is to perceive the time span of a evolutionary process. Most of our discussions around innovation, creativity, religion, civilization etc etc spans up to may be 10,000 BCE. But, human beings lived even beyond that. Borrowing the following from a website to get a sense of time (http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/sense/sense.html):

If we were to compress the time since the Big Bang into one year, and make the time of the Big Bang January 1,

• The Earth was formed in mid-September.
• The mammals appeared on December 26.
• All human prehistory (from the first known stone tools) and history have occurred in the last 1/2 hour of New Year's Eve.

Thus, all of human history is but a fleeting instant on the cosmic timescale.

Another commonly argued point is if humans evolved from chimpanzees, we should be able to find somewhere in this world, an animal which is in the middle of evolution from chimpanzee to humans. My argument to that is the following:

Crudely speaking calculators can be considered as a primitive form of computers, right? Scientists over time improved upon and invented ways to build better and powerful computers. At some point in their laboratories, they must have stumbled upon something which is not a calculator but as powerful as today's computer. The point is, when you make something better why would you ever go back which is half of what it is now. So, we still make calculators and modern computers. We dont make primitive computers, right? It is exactly the same for natural selection of evolution. Once, a better species is evolved why would nature support making a primitive form of it, it will be wiped out from the face of earth. Also, the evolution is always on. Like, today's computer will be obsolete tomorrow as we make better computers.

Another example, you are baking cake at home and found an optimal oven temperature which makes the cake best. But, you found this optimal temperature by a series of experimental baking of cakes over time and sometimes the cakes did not come out that good. Once, you have perfected the art of baking cake, why would you ever go back to make a half-baked cake?

Is it not exactly same as that in evolution?

Rational Behavior

I was thinking of a situation where there are 5 people and $100 needs to be divided. There are two strategies, in one everyone divides it equally, getting $20 per person.In the other, one of the 5 is randomly picked to get $80 and the rest gets $20 divided equally among them, getting $5 each.
If there was a voting among those 5 people to decide which strategy to be adopted, which one do you think would be adopted? What are the factors contributing to that decision making process?
By pure statistical game of chance and assuming everyone wants to maximize their money, in the first case, the expected amount is $20 and in the second case also, it is (1/5)*$80 + (4/5)*$5 = $20 because there is a 20% chance of getting $80 & 80% chance of getting $5. The expected amounts being same, in the second case there is a remote chance of getting $80 and so based on rational behavior probably people will pick the second strategy.

However, to get into more statistical measures to help making a rational decision, it is good to note that in the first case, standard deviation is zero and the in the second it is 30 meaning higher risk or higher uncertainty associated with it.

By borrowing the following line from wikipedia, "The overall concept of risk is that as it increases, the expected return on the asset will increase as a result of the risk premium earned – in other words, investors should expect a higher return on an investment when said investment carries a higher level of risk, or uncertainty of that return."

One can argue in this example that the expected return did not increase then why should one take the risk of taking the second strategy? Rather if someone is rational they should adhere to the first strategy where there is no risk and fixed return. So, as behavioral economists assume that individuals behave rationally to maximize their utility function may not be a very sound assumption.

Can it be generalized to say, the first strategy is boring and it is socialism(in some form) and the second one is capitalism with it's inherent excitement of making big or losing big, I believe the latter being more prevalent these days of economic turbulence.

Balancing Act

No other word is more subtle in it's meaning than balance. We try to balance our private & public life, joy & sorrow, love & hatred, and so on and so forth, yet it seems to be so difficult sometimes.

Success feeds success, failure feeds failure, the examples of positive feedback loops abound. However, we need a negative feedback loop in our life to keep it balanced. If things go in the wrong direction beyond a threshold it will bring us back to normal, like a thermostat. Yes, that's what we need, a thermostat for our private and public life!!

Thoughts on the stock market...or economy's health

If a stock is a reflection of a company's health, and stock market is a reflection of an economy's health, why can't we close the stock market for a while until economy's health improves. As an individual, don't we look better in the mirror when we are in good shape(physically & emotionally).
There have been instances in the past when the stock market was shut down...why can't we do it now? Why take the pain of looking at(or speculating) a few numbers going up and down every few seconds, minutes, hours, days and months....!!!!

Follow Up - Housing Bubble

In response to all the feedbacks received in the previous post, I am adding some more graphs on this topic. First of all, since this Case Shiller index is only maintained for a handful of cities we are definitely missing out on "Lone Rock"s of US. As the name suggests they are the lone rocks... I go to Milwaukee for work and can tell you that it is nice to have four seasons and if you have a decent job and dont mind shovelling snow from your driveway or car lone rocks of US are the places to be in 3 Bedroom/ 3 bathroom houses available for $150K. Call it a piece of dream or peace of mind.

In response to Joe and my friend Bill's suggestion I have done some moving average analysis on the data that I had. To keep it simple, I have compared only Charlotte(where I would like to move) and San Francisco(where I currently live). The graphs have 4 months, 12 months, 24 months & 48 months moving averages. The flattening of the San Francisco 48 month graph towards the end is again an interesting fact however, the Charlotte graphs do not show any downward trend whatsover.





Now, coming to the income aspect(based on the data in http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h06ar.html ) ,even though it is true that home prices do increase 3-4% yoy to keep up with the inflation the same is not true here. Looking at the median income by region till the year 2006(thats all the data I had in my possesion, I will look for more refined data soon, I know for housing I am comparing city specific data but for income I am comparing region specific data), you see that the absolute values have increased for all the regions.



Interesting thing here is to note the widening income gap between the regions where North-East & West lead the pack. However, by looking at the parallel nature of the lines in the last part of the graph(or the slope of the lines depicting the rate of increase of income), it does not seem that there is any discrepancy between regions in terms of rate of increase of income from 2003 onwards. In the same time frame however, the housing bubble has been busted in most of the cities and it still does not show me any indication that Charlotte, NC will have any major decline in home prices in the coming years and it is completely out of whack with income. But, I am not sure if there is a declining trend in NC economy(I need to do some analysis on that front) which will definitely have an impact on the house prices...