Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Here is a nut case

One would think that we have moved beyond the dark ages but every now and then you see something that really proves it otherwise.

See this. Here is a Indian Forest Service officer who is demanding a dowry of Rs. 1 cr. to get married to somebody otherwise he would breakup his engagement. Now I am thinking that this guy is supposed to take care of forests and animals but if for the sake of money he is ready to trade his life, wife and future happiness and can anybody expect him to not give in to illegal forest mafia and poachers.

For him the value of his life is Rs. 1 cr. which approximately comes to Rs. 900,000* per years for 60 years, that is probably more than his salary. In some sense what he is demanding is utterly unfair, for screwing the whole country he is probably getting Rs. 400,000 per year and for his wife (from wife's father) he is looking for Rs. 900,000 per year.

* Assuming interest rate of 9%

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Mumbai immigration deports children!

Here is an strange news item that I saw. Basically what happened that a couple (both having India passports and green card) and their two children (both having American Passport) landed in India on an Air France flight. Air France made sure for the parents that they have valid travel documents while did not verify for children.

Now after they landed in India, Indian immigration officials refused entry to two children on the premise that they do not have valid travel documents. I am sure they could have behaved properly and been more considerate with the couple but I want to discus some other issues in this post.

Why does a couple with Indian passports have American passports for their children and then he claims that he is ashamed to be and India. I think he demonstrated that he is ashamed to be and Indian when he opted for American passport for his children in the first place.

The other point that I have that would American (or French ) immigration officials have behaved in any different manner i.e. if a family from India with valid passports and visa landed in a US airport but without visa for their children.

There is nothing wrong in one decided to change his/her nationalities if he feels (and the other country willing to do) so. But I have a problem in people expecting better treatment just because they have green cards or their children have American passports and then blaming it in skin. I know almost the whole world is racist and one should learn to live with it but these people do not crib when they are stopped on a US freeway just because of the color of their skin.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

What is wrong with mainstream media

Here is an article in The Indian Experess. The article is titled "It's Rs 250,000 cr loss in 3 days". Why don't these guys understand that this would happen in stock markets. In last one year sensex has gone up from 8000 to 14000 so if it falls by some 1000 points what is the big deal. This 250000 cr. is just notional money which people made by staying in same stock markets. Why can't these people just grow up.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Prime Minister and his speech

Over the weekend there was lot of noise about what prime minister said in the meeting of National Development Council. Here is what Indian Express Reported. The starting line of the Indian Express news says
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said plans for minorities, particularly Muslims, must have the â??first claimâ?? on resources so that benefits of development reach them equitably.

Here is what The Tabloid (oops Times) of India wrote.
In his address to the National Development Council, the PM chose to take up the issue of devising "innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development". The PMâ??s remarks addressed all minority groups as he said, "These must have first claim on resources." BJP used references to Muslims to attack PMâ??s speech.

After all the noise, the PMO came back with following press release.
The statement said the Prime Minister's reference to the first claim on resources referred to all the priority areas, including programmes for the upliftment of SCs, STs, OBCs, women and children and minorities.

So I thought, let me find for myself what PM really said. It is available on PM's official web-site.
I believe our collective priorities are clear. Agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the upliftment of SC/STs, other backward classes, minorities and women and children. The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability. The Planning Commission will of course undertake a thorough review of ongoing programmes to eliminate those which have outlived their original rationale, but we cannot escape from the fact that the Centreâ??s resources will be stretched in the immediate future and an increasing share of the responsibility will have to be shouldered by the states.

The quoted text above is a complete paragraph from PM's speech and from the above paragraph it is very clear that PM is talking of all the SC/ST, OBC, and Minorities. From within minorities, he does say that "particularly muslims ".

I would agree to the PMO press release and it looks to me that most of the media has now has attention span of a one year old kid and can't really read through a 3 page speech so they pick and choose words and sentence segments and report on that.

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Gaia is reborn, version 0.1.1 of open source 3D Earth viewer released

Interesting, I should download and play with this one.
After receiving a letter from Google on November 25, Gaia downloads had to be removed from the webpage. The project doesn't use Google Earth images and data anymore. They now use images from NASA World Wind project. Version 0.1.1 is now available for download and also has some bugs fixed and build system improved.

read more | digg story

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Comparing Tendulkar and Dravid

This post just tried to compare the performance of Tendulkar and Dravid against different teams in matches with large score. This does not talk about only matches when we were chasing. The averages here are slightly off because I have not taken into account the not-out innings.tendulkar-dravid-compare

Again Tendulkar performs better than Rahul Dravid in matches with large scores.

Friday, December 1, 2006

Tendulkar saga

So the Tendulkar saga continues. After I posted the last post people came back and said no but his performance while chasing a score of bigger than 250 is not so good. So I thought that let me see if that is true. See the chart below
average-chasing-score-more-than-250

Actually his performance is much better when he is chasing larger scores compared to when he is playing first.

Tendulkar's performance

So there were some more discussion on Tendulkar's performance. So went around digging around some data. The biggest complain that I have heard that Tendulkar does not play when it matters. I do not understand the meaning of this statement. But I tried to analyze it in my own way.

See the chart. This is Tendulkar's average against all the teams in first inning matches.

First inning averages

From this chart it is very clear that Tendulkar's average score is better against almost all the teams when Indian team wins, from this I would conclude that he plays better when Indian team wins or Indian team wins when he plays.

See the next chart from second inning data

Second inning average

Again the second inning score averages prove the same point. At this stage people question that no he does not play better when India chases a big score. See the next chart.

Comparison across innings

That impression does seem to be true to some extent. When India wins while chasing a score, Tendulkar's average is lower than when India wins while batting first. But even average of Tendulkar is not really bad even when India in chasing.

Cricket and Indian Team

We were having a coffee table discussion on how much does Sachin Tendulkar suck in cricket. I thought that I should really figure out the truth in that. So here is some analysis of past performance of our batting stalwarts.







































































































































 TendulkarDhoniDravidShehwagPathanYuvraj

141



2



9


Â

1



24



12


Â

26



9



8



12



65



18



6



8


Â

93



4



23



0



1



64



52



35



7



7



10



0



26



29



51



4



9



19


Â

10



28



49



17



0



0



35



14



52



65



10



0



2



55



18



0



1



27



1



26



63



18



47



27


 Total

334



224



234



137



150



261


10 Inns Avg

33.40



24.89



23.40



15.22



16.67



29.00


5 Inns Avg

15.40



34.80



37.20



21.80



15.40



10.80


5 Inns Avg next match 0

19.30



24.67



22.50



15.22



16.56



26.33


10 Inns Avg next match 0

9.60



24.60



36.40



20.00



11.60



10.80



If you look at the table, there is very little to choose from. Of course in last five matches Tendulkar has really been bad but the fact is that whole team is trying to out-underperform each other.

Let's compare the results as a chart. We will first compare the results of all these players in last 10 matches adn 5 matches.



As we can see, the point that Tendulkar's performance has been pathetic is true but so is everybody else's. When I brought this point in the discussion, I was told that it is all because of one century of tendulkar, so I thought that assume all these players would make zero in next match and then see their performance. Because that would eliminate one score of 141 from Tendulkar. Even with that the results are as follows.



Apart from Dravid standing out, it is still a really same pathetic story. So the point is dropping one or two players from the team is really not a solution. Something else needs to be done. We also do not have a great second line of players so that you drop all of them and have a good team at the end of it.

I would say that TV viewers need to vote with their wallets. Stop becoming a source of huge amounts of money for cricket board then only you would see a change.

Â