My Perspective

I love to watch Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind" time and again. Every time, it inspires me to strive harder for my 'original idea'. To see a man of such caliber struggle to make himself count, makes me wonder "We have everything right in our lives, yet what have we accomplished with it?".

Prof Andrew Ng, former faculty at Stanford University, provided good insight on what the graduate student admission committee looks for in a personal statement (also known as statement of purpose) from a applicant on his website [1]. The overall points raised are also applicable to any SOP not just for university admissions. I made a summary of the points raised for my personal use (and hence the first part is written in first person). I felt that I should share it on my blog for others who might find it useful. Here are my notes on the how to write a SOP and more importantly what not to write in an SOP for a graduate application. Previous relevant experience Discuss small number of relevant projects Role in the project Specific work Insights I had, experiments and outcomes Result - publication, award, impact Briefly mention a

Psychotic-like-experiences (PLE) are prodromal symptoms of psychosis. Their analysis not only has the advantage of early detection but also circumvents the disadvantage of confounding due to medication. These motivate the authors [1-2] to study

How do we determine the distance to a pulsar? Background Pulsars are rapidly spinning and highly magnetic neutron stars that emit regular pulses of electromagnetic radiations e.g. Crab Nebula Pulsar in Orion constellation. Need Pulsars have been found in different star clusters and sometimes in other galaxies. By measuring the distance to the pulsar we can

What is tinnitus? It is a debilitating disorder where people suffer from a chronic "phantom hearing sensation" i.e. perception of sound in the absence of any acoustic stimuli. It is often perceived as hissing or ringing sound in the ears. Who is at risk? Tinnitus could happen to anyone among us. Even listening to music at high volume for several hours daily is a known cause.

As I was thinking about PI, I felt may be I could compute its value from a limiting case. Could PI could be defined as the ratio of perimeter of a "cyclic equilateral polygon" to its "circum-diameter" under the limits of inifinite number of sides for this polygon? Let me explain.